


When my Mask becomes your Crown

by pinkzero



Series: Unravelling the Veins of a Heart [1]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Adora is Bad at Feelings too (She-Ra), Adora was hard to write because she's really good at avoiding thoughts, Angst with a Happy Ending, Best Friend Squad (She-Ra), But I promise that Adora does think sometimes, Canon Compliant, Canon Continuation, Catra is Bad at Feelings (She-Ra), F/F, Flashbacks, Haha. Promise., Has a posting schedule / will finish, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Jump Attack, Madeup Festival, Mentions of Horde Prime - Freeform, Mentions of Shadow Weaver, Mentions of Swift Wind, Minor Bow/Glimmer (She-Ra), Minor Entrapta/Hordak (She-Ra), Missing Scene, Moves from the past and into the future explaining why we got the season 5 Shera we got, Post-Canon, Tags May Change, There's a lot of internal Catra thoughts about certain Canon scenes, This was supposed to be 50/50 perspective-wise but it definitely didn't end up that way, Violence, tags are for the entire story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:49:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 29,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26352181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkzero/pseuds/pinkzero
Summary: “Catra, you know you can ask me anything.”Adora-as-She-ra is looking down at her, an entirely non-existent wind billowing the long flowing wisp of her ponytail behind her. Catra has been wanting to ask this since she first saw Adora transform on Darla and she decided that she can - that she should right now but now she doesn’t know where the rest of her words have gone. She doesn’t know what words to use to ask, but she knows that she must.She wills her feet to pad over the three steps she needs to get into Adora’s glowing space and raises onto the balls of her feet - extending a single finger to tap a claw on the perfectly shining gold plating framing Adora’s face.Catra’s mask. On She-Ra form. On Adora.
Relationships: Adora/Catra (She-Ra)
Series: Unravelling the Veins of a Heart [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1914880
Comments: 51
Kudos: 305





	1. Strawberry

**Author's Note:**

> Adora sort of knows why She-Ra’s magic manifested how it did but only because its one of the very few Etherian celebrations which she felt so undeniably meaningful to her. She feels proud to honour her most loved so visibly to the Etherian people - to show those who look upon She-Ra with starry awe in their eyes that Adora is not a solitary hero. That she honours those closest to her as parts of herself. 
> 
> Catra clung to her identity with bloodied knuckles, even as it crumbled to shrapnel shoving their pieces into her fingers as she struggled to hold it against her face. Its only after its gone - days after being completely crushed beneath metal tipped boot - that she sees the mask she wore to hide the real pieces of herself has found its way to Adora’s face.
> 
> As She-Ra’s crown.
> 
> And she doesn’t know why.

There is a lot that Adora does not know about Brightmoon still. About the Etherian people, their culture. She’s been here for two years, away from the Fright Zone for just as long; has participated in at least twenty celebrations, some of them twice. Has even helped botch the decade ritual of Princess Prom when Catra and Scorpia infiltrated and kidnapped Bow and Glimmer. She’s read at least six books from Bow’s dads library attempting to find some footing around the Etherian people without accidentally offending them. 

She even asked Bow to bring her back a guide book on festivals the last time he visited them. He’d brought her a giant tome called an encyclopedia and said there were at least seventeen more but they were too heavy to all carry back but that's what his dads had suggested starting with. 

It laid on the floor next to her bed - pages 100 and 101 flattened against the floor marking the last entry she'd read in the night, before the candle she'd been reading by had spent the last of its wick.

So far not much had helped. She knew more about abatises than she’d ever care to know about. 

She knew what she needed to know about the weapons and strategies of war and none of that helped her not feel awkward around the regular people of Etheria. 

She wanted the tome to reveal to her the body language, the idioms and significance of odd gestures. 

Maybe then she could not always be She-Ra when they visit neighbouring villages and kingdoms. Maybe then Adora could feel like she doesn't always need to skirt around the issue that she does not know what to do ever.

Not with her hands, or her feet or her words. Fingers often rubbing patterns into the smooth grip of her sword. Head nodding in agreement to sentiments she doesn’t quite understand. Tucking away turns of phrases and single words without enough context to guess meaning for, so she can ask Bow about later.

And questions on some of the impractical fashion choices people make to Glimmer. She has no idea how people can fight or even run in sandals.

During all of these visits and celebrations and feasts and meetings, she just lets Glimmer and Bow do all of the talking. Only piping in when its about the war, her strategies, She-Ra's lore and sometimes food. 

Because the one thing Adora has learned about Etheria is that she loves all its food.

Well almost all of it.

She does not like those big globulous red fruit things that Bow eats every morning with his quail eggs. They’re mushy, absolutely full of seeds she’s pretty sure she shouldn’t eat no matter much Bow says its okay and so it takes her forever to spit each seed out when she eats one for the first time. He chuckles at her growing plates of light brown seeds. 

They’re not sweet at all. How could that thing possibly be a fruit?

Unlike the strawberry she’s shoving in her face from what used to be a bowl of them in her lap she is now finishing off; sitting cross-legged in her room staring at the waterfall feature she still does not understand the purpose of - blue eyes with hair down, lips red with traces of the fruit’s juice. 

Strawberry. Now that is a fruit. 

And it’s evidence she’d been down to the kitchens too early. 

The pop and crackle is familiar but Adora still startles at the sudden noise. The bowl clanks to the ground as it drops beyond Adora’s legs. She leaps to her feet, twisting her body with well-practised movement, hands half raised in a defensive posture before her shoulders relax at the familiar sight of purple and pink registering in her brain.

“Glimmer!”

Glimmer smiles at the tilt of Adora’s voice. 

“Hey! I came to make sure you were awake but it looks like you have been for a while.” 

“Oh - yeah.” Adora unconsciously rubs the back of her neck before bending at the waist to pick up the bowl, its delicate purple porcelain form thankfully unscathed this time. “Looks like my body didn’t want to sleep in today. Old habits die hard I guess.”

“How were they? In season yet?” Glimmer asks - stepping closer to Adora. She peers into the bowl - its empty. “None left for me?”

Adora’s brain stalls. In season? She squints down at the bottom of the bowl where a small pink puddle of water has pooled. She knows what seasons are sure, even the Fright Zone has blistering cold winters. She remembers Catra complaining every night about having to wear foot wraps during training so her toes wouldn’t freeze off. Fur only got you so far, especially when there weren't any on the pads on your feet.

Adora’s face falls into a frown and her chest hurts. Feels hollow.

She’s already experienced two winters without Catra.

“Adora?”

“Oh.” She forces down the feeling and instead smiles at Glimmer. It’s a bit confused at its edges but its genuine. She figures she can at least answer Glimmer’s first question - it was probably related.

Adora has learned quickly how to roll with not knowing things. Most of the time she can get some kind of understanding from the context, or sneak in subtly related questions with everyone being none-the-wiser that she really has no idea what they’re talking about.

Her brow furrows trying to remember the last time she had strawberries so that she can compare the two experiences.

It had been a while. Last year. They had been softer before. The berries had broken more as she picked them up between her fingers. She had to be more careful to not let ones she’s gripped too hard from dripping onto her shirt. 

Some had anyway. She’d worn that shirt the next day with its small pink droplets.

Glimmer made her throw it away but Adora had another fourteen just like it.

“I wouldn’t know. If they’re in season I mean.” Adora’s voice slows at the mention of ‘season’, looking for a response from Glimmer. Trying to gauge if she’s going in the right direction from the subtle expression changes at the edges of Glimmer’s eyes. 

”They were delicious. Not as sweet as last year I think? And firmer.” Adora knows she’s close. Can see no flicker of confusion telling her she’s off base - nothing to trigger the tight string of insecurity in her spine and curtail Adora’s next response to a single stuttered word to avoid further embarrassment. 

But then realization smacks Glimmer in the face. Adora stops chewing the inside of her mouth.

“Ration bars don’t grow in the ground. Sorry I forgot!” Glimmer puts an arm around Adora’s shoulder and pulls her into a sidehug. Glimmer needs to stand on the tips of her boots to reach. Adora can feel her friend’s warmth through her compression shirt.

This one isn’t stained with strawberry juice, but its still well-loved. A duller white than some of her others.

Glimmer bumps her hip into Adora’s and pulls her slowly away from the fountain and closer towards the center of the room by the forearm.

“Do they - not grow all year?” Adora is pretty confident she’s gotten enough context now to put it altogether. It makes enough sense. She’s seen the seasons change in Brightmoon now and the flowers in the garden wilt away just to grow again.

The seasons in the Frightzone almost never changed. It was either too hot and full of smog or too cold and full of smoke.

“Oh no! They’re only here for the summer! And we dry some of them in the Fall - that’s what those little crackly red things are that Bow puts on his ice cream.” Glimmer makes a face. “I mean don’t get me wrong, I love strawberries but like - it ruins the ice cream.”

Adora smiles - she actually really liked the dried strawberries in her ice cream, and the granola, and the tangy bark powder she never remembers the name of - any topping available really. She knows though that Glimmer eats hers entirely plain, every single time, and always makes a face at Adora’s mostly-not-ice-cream bowl and complains to her that she’s ‘ruining the sacred delight of the ice cream’.

“Right now it’s early in the season so they’ll only get better.” Glimmer adds, stopping by the bed - she’s gazing down at it. Adora’s perfectly made bed.

“They were pretty good already.” Adora squeezes Glimmer back before dropping her arm. The other princess steps away and grabs the bowl from Adora’s hand. “Hey! No, let me take that.”

“Well I want some now since someone here was so hungry she couldn’t even share.”

“I didn’t exactly expect you this early.” Adora crosses her arms and raises her eyebrow. “Usually its me or Bow coming to get you.”

“Well its a big day. I needed to make sure you would be ready! And wore something other than… this.” Glimmer motions at Adora’s shirt. She’s not yet wearing her jacket, but her hair is up from when she’d done her morning push-ups. Glimmer’s words are cushioned with friendliness - with love - but they do still twinge a not-great feeling in Adora’s head. Her fingers twitch, missing the presence of the bowl to rub against.

Adora enjoys the celebratory days - she really does - they are exciting and novel and fun and full of food, but she already feels out of her element in all the newness. Throw in all the customs and bowing and dancing and greetings she needs to stumble through, she could go without needing the unsettling awkward feeling she gets when she wears some kind of fancy dress.

Unprepared, slow, exposed, uncertain.

She didn’t mind the red dress from princess prom too much - she actually felt kinda good once she’d worn it for a while. But it still felt a bit alien to her whenever she first puts it on and today was already feeling… weird.

“This one is more casual since its in the afternoon.” Glimmer knows now that Adora is never quite comfortable wearing anything but her usual uniform in public. Her voice is light but purposeful and she looks straight into Adora’s eyes with an extra large smile. “No dress needed.”

“Oh well. Honestly that’s a relief.” Adora tries not to be shy with her feelings to Glimmer, especially since its already lonely enough in her head when she starts thinking too far backwards, to the past and has thoughts she doesn't even know how to decipher into words. 

“But… you can’t wear that jacket.” Glimmer points at the closet which houses at least twelve identical red jackets. It had held more but fighting the Horde had decimated Adora’s original reserves and the tailor refused to make Adora anymore of them. “Bow and I got you a new one, just for this.” 

“Really?” Adora’s face has fallen a little, but her voice betrays her. She is still curious. “So I can wear pants?”

Glimmer laughs.

“Yes. You can wear pants.” 

Glimmer knows Adora will wear her regular pants. She knows it will make her feel better about all of the newness.

“You can even wear your regular pants. Just maybe one of the new ones.”

Adora grins. She has no new ones, but at least one or two haven’t seen battle; she’s pretty sure.

“And we also got you a new shirt - don’t worry its not that different from this one.” Glimmer pokes Adora in the shoulder. Her heart flutters a bit. She feels a bit … excited?

The feeling surprises Adora.

“But for now - you need to wash your face and I need breakfast.” As if hearing her, Glimmer’s stomach growls. Adora touches the side of her own face and feels it’s sticky there. “And you can have round two of those strawberries if you want. I also heard there were some melons delivered from Plumeria for us from Perfuma.”

Adora’s face splits in two with her smile. Of course she is still hungry. She never takes enough to satiate her hunger in her early morning kitchen runs. It feels wrong to take what’s there still. Even after Glimmer and even Queen Angella herself had already told Adora that its okay she can eat whatever she wants whenever she wants.

It’s hard to forget that if she’s caught there - hands full of delicious bounty - that no one will get hurt for her sake. Glimmer is a Princess and Bow is practically part of the royal court being a Master Archer - no one will hurt them - even without Adora there to protect them - to talk down awful words and lessen even worse punishments.

That she’s not stealing from the kitchens. That she’s not wandering the halls after curfew or sneaking outside to the gardens to stare up into the yellow and blue hues of the moons on warm summer nights when sleep feels as far away from her mind as she is from the Fright Zone.

Glimmer grabs her hand before she has the chance to think any more and they snap into the bustle of the kitchen. 

Adora still not having washed her face.


	2. Mask

The sword She-Ra-as-Adora holds is longer, slimmer - looks lighter in her hands. 

“For the honour of Grayskull!”

Catra eyes can barely look at the light. It refracts across the all metal walls of the ship, gold and white and rainbow and then there is Adora. Except she’s She-Ra. Except she looks like Adora.

The skirt/shorts Catra hates have gone, replaced by skin tight white pants that flow unbroken into golden winged boots. Slick shiny armour wrap all the way around her thighs, they crease otherworldly as Adora’s legs shift under her, the fabric looking almost liquid. 

The insignia star of She-Ra is still there but its mirrored top points are melded with sharp and sturdy shoulder pauldrons. The top point of the star-like symbol shoots into the center of the armour connecting the pauldrons where the armour is cut out to reveal more of the white skin-tight material already adorning the majority of her body. The cutout forms a heart above her chest.

Catra can feel her cheeks burn against her will. Her heart is still beating wildly from the fear of the larger situation but this vision of She-Ra-as-Adora has taken the air from her lungs like the vaccum of space would that they’re suspended precariously in.

On her head the thin crown of the Princess of Power is gone - replaced. 

Catra’s mask, long gone to an underheel smash on Prime’s ship before he held Catra’s face in an unrelenting grip, four eyes boring into her, voice detailing each step he’d take to erase her, frames She-Ra’s face.

It tapers into familiar talons across her cheeks cresting upwards seamlessly on the sides of her face into the wings of She-Ra - topping the golden mask connecting to them. The ear-like bumps are gone and so are the two small dark metal details near their base but the points of the inside shape are intact. 

The bright red stone sits in the center of the crown where the gold converges on a triangular tip across the center of her forehead.

All words dry up in Catra’s mouth.

Catra knows it’s her mask. She wants to know why but she can’t ask. Not now. She doesn’t know if ever.

Adora as She-Ra looks… angry. Determined. Like no matter what happens she will win this. Their glowing form turns away from Catra, and the automatic doors of the ship open as she strides through, her metal-soled boots barely make any noise against the floor.

Catra wants to call to her. To say anything. Just in case - but she knows that Adora will be back. She knows whatever is out there attacking Darla, the ship, stands no chance against She-Ra now.

Some part of Catra realizes she stands no chance against She-Ra too, and not ever against Adora.

~

The second time Adora transforms is no less surprising for Catra but she was too busy pulling the backs off of Prime bots to see the glowing light - to be rendered immobile by the sight of Adora becoming more than Adora - but she needs the comfort of her new companion Melog, to help lead her forward into the square when she first enters it and sees the scene before her. 

Adora-as-She-Ra kneeling, her back to her. She almost hopes the mask is gone when she inevitably looks at her. It would make the wild confusion rolling around in her insides easier to manage, easier to contain.

But Adora doesn't turn to her. 

Instead Adora rises, and so does the other princess - the one who was trying to get back her chipped wife. (Bow had told her in private what that had meant). 

They had stormed back into Erlandia to bring her back to the Rebellion.

Catra’s braver with her fingers grasping Melog’s cool head so she does and she starts to gingerly circle around the chaos that is the ground of the square. Pieces of brick shattered and pointed precariously up - just waiting to cut the barren pads of her feet.

She manages to make it around to face them - Adora-as-She-Ra and Netossa - without hurting herself even though most of her brain is preoccupied with anxiety. 

They’ve both risen to their feet now.

Catra sees Netossa, really sees her, beyond the angry and incredulous look she'd given Catra as her net had pinned her to a tree, the magical ropes making Catra’s skin itch. She couldn't blame her at the time, but it didn't make the interaction suck any less. Didn’t make Catra feel any less awful each time she’s looked at her since.

But now what Catra sees is Netossa’s face battling between hope and hopelessness for her partner. Catra knows that feeling. It’s the one which she had to shove into the deepest part of her mind when she saw Adora on the giant screen looming over her and Glimmer at their dinner with Horde Prime. As she saw Adora fight, and fail, on her knees surrounded by Prime’s bots. 

And then again in the micro-second when Adora flickered into view again, twenty feet from her, tears in the corners of her eyes and Catra could do nothing to stop her body from listening to the dark and violent green tendrils of Prime move her limbs like a marrionette. As he pulls dark twisted intepretations of thoughts from her tongue to retch the knife.

And then as Adora pinned her to the hull of Darla, pulling away and saying “You’ll never have to see me again”.

The battle of hopeful and hopelessness driving their combat inwards, barely reaching conclusion as Adora turns away - when Catra finds the strength to move the mountain laying on her chest and she says. “Please. Stay.”

And Adora stayed.

Catra speaks to Netossa.

“She’ll um - she’ll be okay. Spinerella I mean after the chip.” Catra’s bright mismatched eyes glance into Netossa’s. But its too much so she looks away, looks down. She wants to look into Adora’s face, but its too difficult when she’s She-Ra and there's no fighting, no external actions to distract Catra from the unasked why hanging in gold around Adora’s face. The one framing her bright glowing blue eyes looking so sincerely into her right now.

“I um, have some experience.” She resists reaching to the back of her neck, instead halting the movement and rubbing the bottom of her face instead.

~ 

The oily slickness of dark magic grasping the life from her limbs reminds her of something else gross and sickly surrounding her body. But she doesn’t stay long in the memory because there is Adora - body high above all of them, suspended between towering crystals - screaming.

Catra can see through the tears. Adora’s face is in agony. Dots of blue and white rush across her body - encompassing her skin, her clothes. Catra wants to leap up and smash Adora into the opposing wall - outside the clutches of the magic - of the First Ones - of Etheria. Burden the world onto someone else. Anyone else. Shake into Adora a single ounce of self preservation and say ‘haven’t you given them everything already?’.

Catra screams as the darkness tugs her farther under. She can hear Melog’s panic in her mind - their magic burned by each strangling tendril of dark. It grips her soul farther into the whirlpool of desperation. She tries to claw into the dark magic but it accepts her sharpened claws like rubber and bounces her fingers away.

Everything the darkness touches is on fire.

She wants to scream Adora’s name but she can barely breathe - her muscles weakened from the constant strain of preventing her entire body from drowning beneath the depths.

And then she hears it - can barely look up at it, though she must.

“For the honour of Grayskull!”

Light and then Adora-as-She-Ra and a blade of light that slices from her sword dissipates the darkness flooding the floor. Warmth rushes over Catra’s body and part of her feels that dangerous emotion again. It surrounds her where before there was only the oily darkness. But she rejects it and lets it fall from her body. It’s too dangerous to let in now.

The floor is cold where she lays.

Another flash and she hears the thump of the magical assailants hit ground. Of King Micah grunting a swear beneath his breath as he is prevented from consuming them in dark magic a second time.

She-Ra-as-Adora runs to her from the platform, determination masking her features.

“I’ve got it. I’ve got the failsafe. Let’s get out of here.” 

Adora-as-She-Ra’s hand reaches to her. She looks at her, the hurt screaming why. Why does Adora do this? Why does she sacrifice herself? Why does She-Ra have her mask if she doesn’t want her? 

Catra does not want to know. She doesn’t want to know why She-Ra has her mask. It would hurt so much more now to know.

She has the only answer that she needs and it burns brightly against Adora’s chest - marking her as sacrifice.

So she runs out of the chamber. Away from Adora’s outstretched hand and into the false fire.

They don’t talk on their way from Mystacor. She chats a few short sentences with Bow instead before going silent. Catra can hear Adora talk with Glimmer but its mostly in single word answers the entire day it takes them to sneak back. 

Catra misses Melog most of the trip as they’ve disappeared into the group’s cloaking to keep them safe while they travel.

She feels alone. More alone than when she’d sit back to back with Sparkles on Prime’s ship wasting away unknown hours drifting in the void saying nothing at all.

They’d left for Mystacor at the crest of the sun the day before and return to the santuary of the hideout cave in dead of night. Catra and Adora still don’t talk.

Everyone but Catra goes to bed. She volunteers to be first watch. She doesn’t know how to lay in her bedroll next to Adora among all the things she cannot ask and all the things Adora cannot say. 

Melog is curled at Adora’s feet, tired from their journey home, saddened by the dismal thoughts inside Catra’s head.

Adora starts to move in her sleep and Catra watches Melog move onto her fitful body to lay across her torso. Warmth spreads through their connection - but its melancholic and Catra bites the inside of her cheek so no tears will threaten to fall.

Adora settles, her breaths even and soft.

Melog knows that come next watch - when Entrapta places her gloves hand on Catra’s shoulder to take her place - they’re leaving.

~

Catra never once wondered how Adora transforming into She-Ra would feel against her own body. She had spent almost three years hating the altered Adora, hating She-Ra, the embodiment of duty and change that had ripped Adora away from Catra within a matter of hours after a childhood of loyalty. 

There had been a lot of other less kind and violent wonderings that had crossed her mind before, but never this. 

And yet now she wondered if it would always feel this way. This dizzying. This dazzling. This amazing. This loving.

She hoped it would. She hoped they'd live so it could. The literal weight of her love was being shouldered between them and Catra had never felt so alive. Had felt so much hope or seen so clearly a future without suffering.

There was no way they could not survive this now. They would win.

They would be safe. Together.

So when the gold metal of her mask on Adora-as-She-Ra’s face manifested cool against her cheek, Catra didn't have enough room in her thoughts to think why She-Ra had her mask. 

She just wanted Adora to kiss her forever.

“Wow.”

“Don’t ruin it.”

But they had a universe to save so forever would have to wait.


	3. Jacket

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adora gets her surprise from Bow and Glimmer.

Glimmer would not even tell her over their breakfast what this day was about. They danced around the cooks and waiters in the kitchen and snatched up all the fruit they could find lying around on the counter-tops - Adora whining she didn’t want to feel ill-prepared and Glimmer telling her not to worry.

“It’s not a big deal. Just a little surprise.” 

Adora hated surprises.

The head chef handed Glimmer two still-steaming muffins (which were now the only survivors of their meal) and they’d dashed away to find some place to bicker and eat without the din of work around them.

Adora finally felt full, having eaten more than her half of the fruit spoils between them, but there was no way she would leave her lone honey-muffin uneaten. Not even for another hour. Not even if her stomach was already painfully full.

Her thighs felt a bit cool and damp from the small amount of dew collected on the carpet of grass they’d claimed as breakfast table and chair in the west garden

The day was warm, but a cool breeze skittered across her face, the looming and beautiful gates of Salineas played in her mind’s eye at the sensation. But there was no salty air to breathe deeply here in Brightmoon. Adora lightly wondered when the War would force her back towards Mermista’s kingdom.

Adora looked across the landscape before her - towards the West - eyes focusing beyond the treetops of the Whispering Woods - towards the ocean. 

Toward the Fright Zone.

Everything about this moment wouldn’t have ever crossed her mind, not even as a fantasy before she’d gotten the sword, before she’d met Glimmer and Bow and come to Brightmoon.

She didn’t even know she wanted it until she was fully living in it - the walls of the castle, the words of comfort from friendship, the gratitude of those around her as she helped them, saved them.

Adora’s shoulders shrink a bit - she can’t help but notice the empty bits of her life even amongst all the new, wonderful and often sparkly, things. 

She misses Catra’s playful taunting, edging her on to push harder, go faster. She misses her presence at the foot of her bed waking her during the worst of her nightmares with a hand on her thigh and a soft prick of a claw to draw her from slumber. 

She misses the easy understanding in combat - the way they can look at each other and just figure out how to dance around their opponent and win with ease - together.

Glimmer’s voice brings her back to the present. To the muffin cradled between her hands and the still-unfamiliar fullness in her stomach.

“I bet you can’t fit that whole thing in your mouth.” Glimmer is grinning at her - her own muffin still on the napkin in front of her, no longer steaming like when they’d started their feast.

Adora smiles. Competition is comforting and Adora clutches onto it, her uneasiness of the past and the present wiped away with the familiarity of it. Giving into the moment, she stares hard at Glimmer, narrowing her brow and grins.

“I bet you I can.”

~

Adora is finally washing her face, now also greasy with butter from the muffin (she won) in addition to sticky from her early morning strawberry feast, when she hears who she can only think is Bow enter her bedroom with a slam of the door. She’d be surprised if there was no dent in the wall from its force. 

“Here let me see! Adora stay there until I say so!” Glimmer calls out to her. “Or else!”

“Okay, okay!” Adora calls back - fishing around with closed eyes for a towel to dry her face. “Hi Bow!”

Adora has already cracked the wall herself, so maybe she'd get around to fixing it if it finally was a hole in the wall.

“Hi Adora!” he calls back before shrieking. “Glimmer! You’ll wrinkle it!.”

Adora doesn’t even stiffle her giggle. 

She loves them so much. It makes managing the uncomfortable pit in her stomach when she lives in the civilian parts of her life so much easier to ignore.

~

“Okay you can open you eyes now!”

Adora is pretty sure she hasn’t heard Glimmer this excited since their last sleepover involving a seven layer cake. She’s acutely aware of Bow’s hand still on her shoulder - grounding her. Assuring her.

She cautiously opens her eyes.

There is a jacket - its red like her normal one but deeper and more muted - it has almost-black purple accents along the inside of the dropped collar and at the tips of the sleeves, which are long enough to travel down the entire length of her arm but the cuffs are rolled up exposing more of the deep purple lining the inside and fastened with a set of three triangular gold buttons. 

Beneath it is a white shirt with more gold triangles of various sizes, from small tear-sized clusters falling down the sides to a set of two larger ones stacked on top of one another in opposing positions forming a diamond shape with an empty space between them. The neck isn't tall like Adora’s regular shirt, its collar would fit tightly around the base of her neck and has the smallest of V’s dropped in the centre.

The jacket and shirt hang together from the arm of the lantern which illuminates the space next to the water feature. It quietly bubbles in the background.

Suddenly Adora really wants to try it on.

The feeling sets off some wavering fear - but it grows quieter when her eyes travel to Glimmer’s waiting face - those eyes wide and starry - her fists smashed against her cheeks as she tries her hardest to be patient. To let Adora speak first.

“I like it.” Is what Adora says and Glimmer raises one of those fists and does a little jump in the air.

“Yes! Bow you are a genius!” 

Bow squeezes Adora’s shoulder and lets his hand drop and so she looks at him. He is smiling softly down at her. 

“Are you sure? You can like… wear whatever you want. We’re not like - representing the royal court or anything. It’s really not formal.”

Adora is pretty sure Bow shares some of the same discomforts she has about wearing different outfits. People look at you differently. More closely - more analytical. Their eyes stay for noticeable seconds longer - move across the fabric and style choice to search for something to think about. Something personal to pull out of you.

If there is anything there at all.

“Yeah. I’m sure.” 

Glimmer makes some kind of happy scream and leaps towards them. Bow’s hand shoots out to capture the Princess before momentum smashes them all like bowling pins into the pool.

Glimmer wraps her own arm around Adora’s back once she’s landed and she squeezes them all together. 

“Best friend super matching Squad!” 

Bow groans but Adora knows he loves it. He lives for this even. 

“We’re going to match?” Adora can’t help but ask.

“I figured it would be like … a nice light way to join in on the tradition without like…” She pauses for a moment. “Participating in it really.”

Adora laughs. She’s happy. It surprises her that the uncertainty of not-knowing is lessening, that she’s excited. “Okay. Well… since you won’t tell me still where we are going then you need to show me what you’re going to be wearing!”

The fact that they will all match makes Adora feel even better, like maybe she’ll stand out less, in a way.

She doesn’t mind sticking out when she is She-Ra - it doesn’t quite feel like people are looking at her. They’re looking at their hero. The one which fits into their world. The being they’d expected for hundreds of years. The one which they now think can save them.

But as Adora - the ex-Horde soldier - she doesn’t know where she fits. How she fits.

Adora wraps her other arm around Bow so they can lean in to form a circle and she squeezes them as hard as she can without breaking them. 

“Best friend squad!” Bow can’t help himself. Glimmer giggles.

“I love you guys.” Adora gives them one last squish and they drop their arms in unison.

“Time for a fashion show!” Glimmer claps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry that this chapter is short compared to the next one. Adora is really good at avoiding thinking about things. I love that doofus so much - I promise - she's just so difficult sometimes. I ended up editing this chapter five times just make sure I _truly_ got all the blood I could from that stone.
> 
> Next chapter has... a very dramatic altercation. Be prepared for some ouch after all this Best Friend Squad sweetness.


	4. Field

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Physical Violence, Flashbacks/PTSD 
> 
> I promise there is a hint of comfort at the end of all this and far more to come. 
> 
> "Catra thinks that dusk is quite beautiful" << the drama (violence) mostly starts around here, if you want to skip the details of that jazz, I tried to add a more matter-of-fact synopsis of what happens in the end notes under the 'Summary' heading.

It crosses her mind again unannounced.

“For the honour of Grayskull!”

Catra wants to ask Adora about the mask. It’s a month after Horde Prime and like every day but one since, they’re dog-tired before they’ve even begun to work for the day and are entirely drained by lunch. 

Between decommissioning rogue bots, trying to bring supplies to the villages and building temporary shelters for Etherians and lost clones alike - there has been no lack of work to do for the Princesses - or Catra for that matter. She doesn’t mind so much, it keeps from thinking too hard and makes her feel useful. From sunrise to sunset they’ve worked. First from the battlefields of the showdown with Horde Prime, to reclaiming the village of Brightmoon from bots to the now immediate needs of feeding the people by salvaging the decimated farms.

The people need to eat, they need to plant the now ravaged crops again and pray they’ll grow before winter comes.

And Catra doesn’t think to ask Adora when the daily thought about the mask happens each morning as Adora dons her She-Ra strength, because the animals on this farm are dying of thirst in the fields when they’re not plagued by wounds which need to be cleaned. They need her help more. And so by the crest of noon when her work in the back field is done, the thought of the ask entirely escapes Catra’s mind and she’s just happy to have a moment to rest.

A moment is sidle up to Adora’s side and feel her very-much-alive body before they part ways again to continue the forward mometum of repair. 

And today is no different, except she won’t be able to work until the sun sets. Her whole body quakes with soreness. She makes her last trip to the fields, changes the worst of the bandages around the livestock and drags her feet back to their camp at the base of the primary barn.

With a long sigh she collapses to the ground, muscles in her arms spent and her legs shaking from lifting buckets of water to the animals in this farm’s fields for the last forever.

“Are you okay?” She-Ra-as-Adora asks, her new duty of dragging away the torn parts of a now-toppled and cut-apart Horde-Prime tower next to the barns only just started. Bow and Entrapta had managed to decommission its security systems and together with Adora-as-She-Ra and her sword with some repurposed lazers from Prime bots, had cut it apart into more moveable (and still usable, according to Entrapta) bits. All to unblock the road from the entrance of the farm.

Catra only grunts in reply from her place curled up in the grass by their long-dead campfire.

“Well at least you’re alive.”

“Need break. Come here.” Catra manages to let out. Catra more feels than sees She-Ra shrink to her Adora. She sits cross-legged on the ground and Catra scrambles into her lap, clutching Adora’s thigh. No one else is around, well apart from Melog who is almost always asleep these days while Catra works her body to its limits.

Swift Wind has gone to Thaymor for the afternoon to replenish their food supplies. Bow and Entrapta have moved to the next site to start the lengthy process of taking down that second tower’s security systems over an hour ago. Glimmer is in Brightmoon, hearing the pleas of the people and prioritizing aid with King Micah. They hadn’t seen her in four days apart from before bed on Bow’s tracker pad before they passed out in the barn for the night - the screen was usually still on in Bow’s grip when Catra woke each morning before everyone else.

“I love you.” She mumbles into grey pant-leg. 

Adora places a hand behind her ear and start to scratch small circles beneath her fur there. 

“I love you too.”

Catra purrs.

\----------

It’s not even their last day. They’ve torn apart the weaponry and tech from one spire, most of its valuable parts now stored from any possibility of rain in the barn, usurping them all from the comfort of its walls. Their group is now starting through the second Spire. It’s on the outskirts of the farm - leaning on a bubbling river but not impeding it so they’ll be taking the valuable parts and leaving its husk erect in the field. 

They won’t take this Spire fully down because its already taken them too long to just cut the one blocking this farm into enough pieces to clear the road. Much of hull of that Spire is still in high and sharp piles on either side of the road.

They’ve been here for a week and still have another two or three days to go before they can finally travel back to Brightmoon to take a few days to truly rest. 

Catra thinks she’s going to sleep for their four days of rest at the castle, and she’s going to force Adora to lay in bed sleeping with her too, no matter what that anxious hero says, no matter what important court member or friend or Princess needs her. 

She will make Melog grow into at least twice their size and sit on Adora and Adora will not have the heart to move both of their purring bodies from her lap.

Catra is tired and she knows Adora is too - drooling on Catra every night and she doesn't even fight in her sleep. She barely even moves. 

Catra knows because her sleep is broken and short and most of the night she looks between the tapestry of stars in the sky and the rise and fall of Adora’s breaths.

~

Catra thinks that dusk is quite beautiful, but the hour it takes for the dim greys of the newly set sun to finally morph into the moons-shone darkness of nighttime is her least favourite. 

Her eyes have a hard time adjusting to the gray-scape without the sharp contrast of the moons casting edges of lightness across surfaces. Its hard to see the similarly back-lit eyes of creatures in the edges of the forest and its hard to hear the rustle of boots in underbrush against the final night-songs of birds and trudgings of deer and boar that now preoccupy the magic-rich lands of Etheria.

So she’s not going to berate herself too badly that there are at least eight persons charging at her now from the forest’s edge where she was collecting their campfire wood from just moments ago.

Especially since they had at least a full three seconds of her back turned when starting their charge. 

She can see the barn in the distance and Catra is fast - but Catra is doggone tired, her legs were screaming just walking with the sticks she has now dropped - and she knows she won’t be fast enough - so she yells as loudly as she can across the flat pasture before sprinting towards their camp.

“ADORA!” 

She feels Melog’s presence shoot through her - giving her a quick burst of speed - letting her know that she’s been heard. That they are coming - but its not going to be fast enough.

Her pursuers are fresh with rest and they are gaining but she manages to look behind her long enough to see the familiar barrel of a Horde net gun trained towards her. 

She yells and uses the primal fear to leap beyond its shot - but she doesn’t have the capacity to land from her roll running, so she tucks in and rolls forward across her shoulder with the spare momentum instead, coming to rest on her back. She spins onto her front to try to leap away on all fours. She’s faster when she gives in to that wild part of her.

Pushing up on shaking arms from the tall grass she’d flattened beneath her, she gets one foot to connect with ground and pushes off before her body convulses with a terrifying sensation and she unceremoniously hits ground, chin first, clacking her teeth together. One fang tears into her lip and she tastes blood.

Her body can barely obey her when the taloned hand grabs her by the ankle. She tries to kick them away, but its weak and is met with a low, cruel laugh.

“What a pretty kitty.”

She uses all her power to growl and try to kick them a second time as another hand grabs her, this time the opposing wrist. A second terrifying wave of pain jolts through her body from her thigh.

It feels too normal - this kind of pain - and she fights from getting lost in it. She focuses instead on getting her shaking chest to breathe - to look into Perfuma’s eyes as she says ‘just focus on my breath when you can’t focus on yours’, the last time she’d seen the princess.

They try to lift her but Catra knows better and stays as limp as possible, urging her body towards gravity - trying to slow them down - trying to conserve her energy and recover from the twitching of all her muscles against the shock. Trying to not let her mind give in to the all encompassing fear. 

Adora is coming. If she can stay in this moment - she can survive it.

“CATRA!” She can hear Adora scream for her. “FOR THE HONOUR OF GRAYSKULL.”

“Shit.” One of the voices exclaims. Fear. Light splashes against the faces of her assailants but only three are in her view. 

Catra recognizes the torn symbol of the Horde across a white uniform shirt on one of the women - their crested reptilian head pointed towards Adora - roaring. The other two are smaller in form - one looks as though they are one of the people of Thaymor, but their mushroom cap looking head is dented on one side. The third is already mid-air, their coyote-like body littered with scars, body so thin it makes Catra uncomfortable. They hold a shortened scythe and are mid-swing - knocking something away whizzing through the air.

Neither of the other two look remotely like ex-Horde soldiers. They're clumsy and frail. On any other day Catra would have laughed in their face if they’d attacked her.

“Haul her up and run!” 

The hands trying to drag her by limbs pull away and instead someone picks her up over their shoulder. Catra is higher above the ground than she would be if even Huntara were to hoist her up. 

She unsheathes her claws and uses all her remaining effort to dig them into the metal sheet covering the back of her kidnapper. She hears the awful screech of metal beneath her sharper-than-diamond claws and the satisfying yell of pain below her.

The grip loosens considerably but doesn’t let go. 

Catra shifts all her weight to the left - trying to throw them off balance - have them both hit the ground. 

She succeeds - but the ground hurts - a lot. And the third shock across her body hurts so much more. She curls into a ball - tail laid protected against the inside of her leg - its bushed out exposing her fear for everyone to see. Her hands grip hard against her biceps as she tries to stay rooted in the moment.

The haunting drag of red electricity threatens to black out her vision, to freeze her in place and deliver her an uncaring death. Screams she isn’t worth the body bag or the time it would cost to be cast away.

The violent green crackles deafen her to any of the words around them but the taunting song of her name, the sharp sting of metal fingers gripping into her cheeks. The frigid metal of gurney as she ceases her struggle and lets the pain stab into her neck. Travel down her body and beyond her senses.

And then she’s drowning again in the voices. Her heart is pounding so hard she feels it in the soles of her feet that won't obey her mind to move. To run.

But she’s numb. She wants to scream until her vocal cords are broken with the sound but her mouth betrays her and nothing comes out.

Those metal tipped fingers lift up her chin - exposing her neck. Slid around the fur against their growth and metal taps on metal and Catra’s body goes rigid against her wishes. Hot pokers shoot down her spine.

Her hands twitch, she concentrates on the small movement. Clenches her claws into flesh to try to not wind up back on the ship - back to that voice. She expects the pain to bring her back but she feels nothing - just the deep and sharp ache of electricity as it pulses through her again.

Her body hits the ground again (when did she get up?) and she rolls into the momentum - grass tickling her face.

She holds onto that reality. There was no grass, no living green thing in that horrible place.

Something else tries to grab her, something long and soft and firm and she yelps and curls up as tight as she can - all of her body wound as tightly as possible waiting for the pain again.

Waiting for the laugh to come. Her ears flatten against her head.

A cool rush covers her body and she recognizes the feeling but is too focused on not falling into the giant swirling pits of memories to do much with it.

There is a whistle above her, and then an explosion somewhere nearby - and a flash of too-bright light. Another explosion, a high pitched cackle and the resounding crash and ring of connecting metal.

And yelling. And voices. And more yelling. And less voices.

Someone is screaming somewhere in the distance.

And silence. Only the sounds of bodies breathing deep ragged breaths and her own shuddering between quiet sobs.

The cool sensation drifts away leaving a hollow space in her lungs.

“Catra?” A voice breaks the symphony of breaths. It is despondent and almost disappears on the wind.

She feels the lightest drag of warm fingertip across her arm and she doesn’t want to flinch away - not really - but her body does - expecting the pain of electricity at the first sign of touch.

A feeling of love slowly crawls into her mind and disentangles some of the fear. It pulls sections of it back from her mind into itself, sharing the burden.

Then the cool sensation returns - the soft face it belongs to follows, rubbing its cheek against her shoulder and mewls. She doesn't flinch away this time. 

Melog’s nose bats at the fingers still clenched into her arms and she slowly lets go to allow them to snuggle their nose into the palm of her hand.

She takes a breath she hadn’t realized she was still holding - slowly untensing as much of her body as possible with the flow of calming thoughts Melog. 

There are no words. Just feelings. She floats with them.

Blindly she reaches out and hugs the Melog’s giant head against her chest. They purr into her - drawing more and more of the memories away until she can be in the present again.

She opens her one yellow eye facing towards the sky and it connects with the lit blue eyes of Adora-as-Shera. They are glassy with unshed tears. She is leaning against her ground-pierced sword with one hand, her opposing knee on ground, other hand inches from Catra’s body, turned upwards. Waiting.

She looks so scared and so brave and more Adora than she has ever seen in She-Ra since The Heart. Her hand is shaking in its pose mid-air.

“Catra?” Her voice is stronger this time.

She sees Bow and Entrapta’s shapes in the dark behind Adora. They’re close but still a few feet away. Catra would know Entrapta’s hair anywhere - can see the red bulbous eyes of the mask she’s still wearing reflect some of the light emanating off of Adora-as-She-Ra.

Her eyes flicker back to trace along Adora’s face - around the side of that mask, lingering a bit on the sharp details across her cheek. Catra untangles her top arm from Melog’s mane and reaches out to grab Adora-as-She-Ra’s trembling hand. A loud sigh of relief comes from above her somewhere - its Bow some part of her jumbled brain knows.

Catra’s tail uncurls and flicks softly behind her. 

Her ears twist around, listening for the noises of the night which attacked her, heart starting to race again, but there is nothing to be found. Just Adora’s exerted breathing and her own shuddering and shallow breaths. A light wisp of wind against the blades of dying grass.

Catra was tired before and she’s exhausted now. Her eyes close against the image of Adora-as-She-Ra face sagging in relief as Catra weakly reaches out and grabs Adora’a hand.

“Bow makes dinner now. He’s a better cook anyways.” Is all she says before her fingers lose strength and she passes out.

~

Catra is very sore but wonderfully warm when consciousness returns. She’s wrapped up in more than her own blanket and the familiar rumble and weight of a small Melog is laid across her legs. Her fur is damp and cold on her left side and there’s a crackle somewhere there with every breath she takes. There’s the ghost sensation of pain deep in her ribs but the skin feels numb.

She peeks open her eyes to see they are outside the barn door - a roaring fire oddly close to the structure. It crosses her mind that Adora probably made the fire and that its exactly regulation distance away - no more, no less and though it looks like it's close by Catra’s cautious standards, it will be safe.

Adora is turned away, looking out across the plain of the fields, her sword still manifested, resting its tip on the ground and its handle against her hip, held loosely from falling with her palm. Catra can see her face is tilted up. She’s gazing at the stars.

The night is clear and the moon’s have brightened up the dark landscape considerably.

Entrapta is curled up on her side next to the fire, her hair draped over her hips like a blanket, not quite asleep but with heavily lidded eyes focused in on a small device in her gloved hands. She turns it over and over in her grasp before using a small tendril of hair to reach into her pocket to pull out a screwdriver and start to unscrew something on the small ball.

Her tracker pad lays lit next to her - jumbles of lines skittering across the screen.

Catra opens her eyes a little further and shifts her head to find Bow leaned against the log he and Adora had dragged over their first day here. His chin is tucked against his chest and he is now fully dressed in his battle gear, not the lounging cotton pants and tank top she’d seen him in when she left the barn, and his eyes are closed. Catra is pretty sure he is asleep. A light snore pierces the air. 

Definitely asleep.

She wraps her hands tighter around the blanket edge tucked against her chin. Moving seems like something for morning Catra. Even the muscles in her face ache.

She wants Adora to come to her, but she doesn’t want the attention of the others in her broken state. She starts to purr softly, its only a semi-conscious choice. It helps take the edge off.

Melog shifts on her feet and Catra’s semi-hooded eyes follow their form as they grow to their normal size and stretch out - yawning largely. 

Need?

The word fizzles across her consciousness. It’s tipped with insistence at an answer but Catra doesn’t know what she needs. Probably just to fall back asleep - but she doesn’t feel like she can now. She swallows with difficulty - trying to not let her mind wander too far from the moment.

It got lost earlier which means its likely to get lost again.

Thirst?

Melog’s presence tries again - this time padding towards her top-half. They lay a paw gently on her shoulder. Their weight is far lighter than their size dictates and Catra only winces a little. That side hurts quite a bit. She must have landed there.

Okay. She thinks to the dead air. Their language connection only runs into her - not from her thoughts which is occasionally annoying but since Melog is pretty much her emotional projection (much to Catra’s dismay most days) but they usually get the point from her body language.

She slowly blinks at Melog to actually answer their question - prodding them through the blanket with the claw on her pinkie.

A wave of exhaustion hits her behind the eyes and she shuts them - burying her forehead into the blanket - dulling the light from the fire. Her available ear twitches when Melog moves away before quickly settling to its place plastered against her head.

She feels so incredibly uncomfortable in her body and immediately regrets sending Melog away - even for the few moments it will take them to complete their quest. Their presence had drawn away some of the poison from the earlier encounter but now it was gaining traction again.

She buries her face in the softness of the blankets. It smells like her. It smells like Adora. 

Catra lets a small smile lift the corner of her mouth and then she’s asleep again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Catra getting beat up was not really planned - this was just a scene which happened and... ended up working fairly well for dealing with their emotional things later on... really I wanted a full fight scene (they're so much fun) but Catra was understandably just too tired to really put up any kind of real fight on her side of things.
> 
> Maybe another story we'll see her true ferocity come back. 👀 😼
> 
> Anyways, let me know what you think, or just say hi. 👋
> 
> #### TW Scene Summary
> 
> Catra is collecting firewood by herself and is jumped by a group of vagabonds. One is ex-Horde, the rest look lost. She calls for Adora, knowing she won't be able to take them, but Adora is back at the barn. Melog lets Catra know that she's been heard through their bond and so Catra tries to run to delay for time, but she is too tired and gets overrun. They try to kidnap her and she gets very roughed up in the process. Catra puts up quite a fight but they have Horde stun rods and being electrocuted brings back mixed and muddles memories (Shadow Weaver/Horde Prime etc) which makes her fight more difficult. She manages to topple the person who has picked her up onto the ground, but they both get hurt.  
> More scrambling and then Melog, Bow, Entrapta and Adora make it to her and drive off the attackers.  
> Adora tries to reach out to Catra, but she's still in the throws of the memories so Melog slowly coaxes her back to the present with their calming presence and touch.  
> When Catra opens her eyes Adora-as-Shera is there waiting with an outstretched hand, Bow and Entrapta waiting a bit behind them.  
> Catra reflects on the Adora-as-She-Ra's mask.  
> Then she takes Adora's outstretched hand and says “Bow makes dinner now. He’s a better cook anyways.” before passing out.
> 
> The very last scene should be safe to read (scroll up to where you hit a `~`), its only about ~750 words. Starts here -> 'Catra is very sore but wonderfully warm when consciousness returns.' It covers her waking up back at camp and feeling crunchy.


	5. Eclipse

They’d traveled to the base village at the farthermost edge of Brightmoon Lake, where the Moonstone glimmers high in the sky above them. The castle sits on the tall narrow mountain above them, its tallest point wrapped high in the bright sky of afternoon.

She remembers being here before - before she knew the ins and outs of Glimmer’s cake addiction and the excited squeal Bow makes whenever he put together another small Princess (or Bow) figurine and presents the sculpture to them.

She’d zapped sentience into Swift Wind here and in the horror of the moment - he’d run into the crowds of Etherian refugees from Thaymor which had set up camp in the livestock grazing pockets of the village. 

Adora had gone after him - the sword of She-Ra not having transformed her as she’d wanted it to, but him instead. She’d been so confused and desperate to not lose Glimmer and Bow’s horse in addition to the stress of trying to convince the Queen that she was an ex-Horde soldier now - and one with some kind of legendary powers which could gain the Rebellion advantage in the war.

But when she’d neared the not-quite Horsey (Swift Wind), seen the whites of his eyes look on her with too much realization, he’d gusted away the purple poncho she’d adorned as cover over the Horde symbol still emblazoned on the back of her uniformed white undershirt.

Then he flew away on his newly gained wings - leaving her exposed as false insurgent. Left for impalement on pitchfork or arrow. She had escaped in a frenzy - falling down the ravine wall that led to the river and finally to the cover of the woods.

That had been a bad day. But she’d met Razz that day so it wasn’t the worst.

The image of her sword falling off the cliff - yellow and blue turning away, echoes of a familiar voice with an unfamiliar cruelty flashes behind her next blink. Adora swallows. Not even close to the worst.

Adora seldom ventured down to the village now - and never without Bow or Glimmer - the memory of that shame still ran hot in her veins almost two years later - even as the people of the village now doted and fawned over her as She-Ra.

But here as Adora, she was mostly left to the background of the bustle - as the company of the Princess or as a faceless companion to Bow and still she was always terrified that someone from that day would recognize her hair or her uniform, even with the Horde symbol vacant across her belt and shirt. Replaced long ago with the winged badge of Brightmoon on her belt.

She still never had taken her jacket off in this place the few times she had visited, just in case.

So it felt weird that she’d taken this new one off as they’d stood in the beaming heat of midday. 

She hadn’t wanted to ruin it before the festivities began - and they were quite early - Bow having thought a picnic and some people watching would be interesting for them. Especially as the vendors and the decorators twirled around continuing to finalize the decor for the festival.

The hand not holding the dark maroon jacket over her shoulder trailed across her chest, running the tips of her fingers across the very thin metal triangles adorning the front of her shirt. The fit of the shirt was good and it bent when she moved in the same way as her regular attire, but the base of her neck felt very exposed.

The sensation was weird.

But here, sitting down on a periwinkle picnic blanket and settling in to eat food that Glimmer had said was part of the tradition of the day, with scurrying Etherians running by them with carnation wreaths and round silver balls on long ropes, Adora had felt the discomfort of the new shirt with each set of eyes staring down at them. It was hard to be totally invisible when your best friend was a Princess and the very Princess of the lands they were in now no less.

She scooted over a few inches to the right, closer to Glimmer but still leaving room for Bow to reclaim his spot between them, and put on the decorative jacket, hoping it would feel even a bit less like it was suffocating her. The vulnerability of the exposed neck of the undershirt was worse than overheating now.

When she looked in the mirror before they’d left - after she’d asked Bow why he was crying and he’d responded with ‘nothing’ - she was pretty sure she liked how she had looked.

She definitely hadn’t not liked it.

The red of the jacket was different, but not too different and the collar was almost the same just purple on the inside. The shoulders of the jacket exposed more of the strength that laid beneath them with their lower curved style and the gold buttons on the cuffs matched the triangles on the front of her undershirt.

The sleeves were odd though - they moved around her forearms, the feeling of the movement of the fabric against her undershirt, just above her wrists, was a bit distracting. If she had to swing her sword it would move with the momentum and be even more noticeable.

But she looked good. Even Adora couldn’t deny that the outfit made her look fancy and still powerful. She appreciated being able to move around, only slightly impeded by the tighter fit around her shoulders. 

The jacket wouldn’t really stand up to fighting. It was just slightly too stiff. She would need to discard it if there was a scuffle.

Adora had to remind herself they were in the heart of Bright Moon. Far from the Fright Zone. The likliehood of a direct attack was negligibly low. It would be too dangerous for the Horde.

She forcibly calms her thoughts - draws her attention back to contemplating her outfit. It’s not that different but it feels so different. 

Adora does especially appreciate being able to wear her grey pants and her regular boots though. They weren’t a perfect match like the ones Glimmer had also brought ‘just in case’, but Bow had been quick to tell her that her regular ones would be just fine.

It made her feel like she could maybe make it through the afternoon.

Sometimes she wears other more casual outfits in the safety of the castle - mostly her sleep shirts or shorts or the few plain pieces Glimmer forced into her closet.

But never out in the kingdom at large.

Adora looks over at Bow who was settling in between her and Glimmer, arms full of decorative wooden bowls from the very first openings of the food vendors. Round bits of icing and sticks with clear pieces on the ends of them in the shape of giant oh’s jutted up from the mess.

“Some help?” Bow squeaks. “Ah! Careful Glimmer! You’re going to stain my shirt!” 

His outfit is perfectly colour-matched to hers, and to Glimmer’s. The tell-tale heart is still emblazoned across his chest, but his right pauldron is absent, leaving a trail of golden triangles in its place which lay flat against his shoulder and taper down his chest. The base of his top is still white and expose his abs, but his collar lays flat against his chest in a V and is the same dark purple as Adora’s jacket’s collar and reaches down to form the upside-down triangle above the heart. His pants match exactly the colour of Adora’s except for the dark purple stripe which comes up the entire pant leg.

He almost never wears anything else out in the kingdom at large either - except with Glimmer during royal events. And even those outfits are quite reminicent of his regular attire.

So when she first saw him as he leapt out of her bathroom, she was a little floored how different this outfit had looked on him.

But then of course she’d zeroed in on how perfectly Bow’s pants matched her own - not noticing the difference in the stripes traveling down the sides as he stood straight in front of her in the doorway of her bathroom.

“Surprise! We’re all going to match!” He’d exclaimed - practically running up to Adora. And of course Adora could only think one thing.

“Are those… my pants?”

“What? No!!!” Bow looked incredibly offended. “I know who your tailor is Adora, I introduced you two. Though I’m pretty sure asking them to make another pair of the same trousers may have broken them.”

And then the magical ‘pop!’ announced Glimmer was back. She stormed out of the bathroom before Adora could respond.

“Bow! You were supposed to wait for me! You ruined it!”

“Glimmer… you look amazing.” Bow says, his voice oddly airy as his body turned away from Adora to match his gaze. “And it’s still a surprise! I just came out.”

Glimmer wore a dress - its base the same dark purple in Adora and Bow’s outfits its white straps flower seamlessly into the trim of the low lying collar. It‘s sleeveless with large and small golden triangles thrown all along the bottom hem sitting just above her knees, containing the same white trim as the top of the dress. Her boots the same grey and white as Adora’s but with the added detail of small gold triangle studs at the top where it rests just above her ankle.

The muted red of the jacket Adora was wearing appeared in the form of a belt cinched around her natural waist.

Adora was a bit speechless and even more confused. Bow and Glimmer loved to match each other’s colours for whatever event they needed to attend - but Adora had never matched alongside them and they’d never asked her to.

Which she mostly appreciated because the two outfits she had for those ceremonies and celebrations already felt like two too many.

“This is incredible guys. Thank you for doing all this.” Adora gestures to their scattered group across the room. “This is really…” Her brow furrows looking for the word. “Cool.”

“She likes it!” Glimmer cried.

Adora smiles. 

The memory is still so fresh - its basically still happening. She looks over at Bow, who extends out a stick with a large crystalline yellow ball on top of it.

“Try this! You’re going to love it!”

“Lemon? Give Adora the green one! Its so much better!” Glimmer elbows Bow and he bumps lightly into Adora with the momentum.

“Glimmer! I just said - shirt! There’s a drink in my lap!”

Adora swipes the yellow one before Bow has the chance to even think of switching them on her. She’ll probably just eat both. The yellow reminds her of something and she wants it.

“When are you going to tell me why we’re matching?” She pops in the yellow globe in her mouth and stars glaze over her vision. “How ib thibs so gooooood?”

“It’s candy. You’ve had it before just like - its usually this size.” Glimmer pinches her fingers around the tip of her pointer finger. “And comes wrapped in that brightly coloured wax paper. We had them during the Spring Gallant.” 

Adora remembers them. They were a special delicacy and Queen Angella had very specifically told Adora she could have three. The party had been one of the more formal ones, and they’d spent most of the hour long ceremony sitting and there were some speeches and some prayers to the moons and then they’d gone to bed. No dance and no large dinner. She’d snuck into the kitchens to try to find more of the sweet little balls but none were to be found. Still hungry she’d found some oatmeal slow cooking on the stove and had eaten that with some honey. It was still a bit crunchy versus when she ate the silky paste in the morning, but it was still way better than ration bars.

“And to answer your more pressing question.” Glimmer continues. “Bow and I wanted to celebrate this day with you without like - pressuring you into the…” She pauses to think. “Culture of the actual tradition.” 

“It’ll make more sense once we explain what all of this is.” Bow sweeps his only food-free hand across the scene in front of them. “Do you see all the moons?”

It was a silly question. Of course Adora saw all the moons. They were the only moving constants in the sky apart from the glow of the sun and they were entwined into everything in a way which Adora no longer noticed in Brightmoon.

On murals and vases and clothing and armour and tattoos.

But as she looks closer she sees that the symbology of the crescent moon of Brightmoon is noticeably absent in the decor strewn all around the field.

The moons are just a lot of blue circles with small golden triangles scattered around them. They fill banners and hang from trees and shiny metallic ones sit on top of posts scattered around the outskirts of the clearing.

Non-vendors are now making their way into the field, congregating at the stands and putting down blankets and some of their clothes have the blue circle on the chest and some have the triangles scattered around them or patterned across their backs.

But no one else really looked like they truly matched like the Best Friend Squad did.

Adora crunches the remains of her glorious candy between teeth. “I see… blue circles? And triangles like these?” She prods one of the metal triangles on her chest. It clinks against her the tip of her perfectly filed and short nail. “But no one else is matching like us.”

“It’s not really part of the tradition to match. It’s just an interpretation of the ceremony people can do that Glimmer thought would go along with the festival.” Bow hands her a round piece of bread. “So the moons. If you look up right now you can see the biggest one in the sky over there.”

Adora looks up and sees it.

“That’s Ehlo and once every five years it eclipses with its own moon Diqueseus. We’re orbiting the sun from pretty far away right now and so when Ehlo eclipses the sun and Diqueseus eclipses Ehlo, the light from the sun will form a ring around Ehlo and Diqueseus will go dark while Ehlo will still lightly glow from the ring of the sun around it.“

“And Diqueseus isn’t really round like the rest of the moons, its more like a triangle.” Bow lifts his hands and makes a triangular shape with his index and thumbs fingers.

Adora looks beyond Bow and at Glimmer, ripping a piece of the bread and playing with it between her fingers. Toying between shoving it in her mouth and asking a question.

“What do you mean by, the ceremony people can do? It’s not mandatory?”

Adora was used to the rigid ceremonies of Brightmoon now, they were a lot like the rigid protocols of the Horde, just with a lot more frill and steps. So many overwhelming steps. And so many rules which made absolutely so logical sense.

“Well - its a personal ceremony, one you do with your family, or friends or significant others.” Glimmer offers. “But it has a couple of ways to celebrate it like … ” 

Glimmer pauses and reaches behind her to grab something from the picnic basket Bow had brought and had kept well out of Adora’s food-finding hands their entire walk here.

She quickly pulls out a handful of vines and presents them to Adora.

“One of them is tying these around your friend’s wrists when it happens. Its good luck for both of you if you do it under the Eye of Ehlo!” She hands Adora two of the vines. They still have small triangular leaves scattered across them which are squished close to the stem. They are very bendy. Adora grasps an end with each of her hands and flexes them aggressively.

If they’re going to break she wants them to break now. Not when she’s fumbling in the dark trying to participate in this tradition.

“But you’re more than a friend to us.” Bow adds.

Adora stops the flexing and stares up at him with wide eyes.

“But it doesn’t seem fair that we really - spring this on you now when you don’t even know what this is all about.” He shifts back so that Glimmer can shift forward. 

They’re in their own triangle formation now.

“There’s another ceremony, where you can honour a person you’ve taken as part of yourself. You gift them a token. It can be whatever you want it to be - but you can only gift them a token once under the eye of Ehlo - the moon who took its own moon and became something special.” Glimmer takes her hands. Adora had dropped the bread to the blanket at some point long ago. “It blesses your connection through the token with its magic so that you are always together. That even if you… lose that person… that part of yourself, they can still always be with you. Always be a part of you.”

Adora’s chest constricts. The sky looks too bright. The space around them is too noisy. There are too many people.

Always with you.

Even at the end of the world?

Adora knows who she would have celebrated this with if she had known she could celebrate. She wishes she could have kept something to remember the laughing, taunting Catra. She wishes there had been parties, festivals, food, friends who could show you love without it being a weakness. 

Maybe things would have been different.

But there hadn’t been anything like that in the Fright Zone so there was no use in entertaining the question.

The reality was that even in the brutal landscape of their childhood, Catra had shown her challenge, confidence, strength and friendship. True friendship. 

And Adora had left. Now she only had the memories to live with. Ones which lost colour anytime she had to face the glaring symbol of the Horde through the ashes of destruction floating in the air on the battlefield. Lost sharpness each time she had to stare into Catra’s gold and blue eyes from the other side of smoke and pain.

Bow’s hand lands on Adora’s shoulder and her eyes shoot up to meet his. They crinkle at the edges. He gives her a comforting squeeze.

“A lot of people get engaged today too - but its not really a romantic thing.”

Adora notices now there are tears tracking down her face and she blinks, not wanting to take her eyes off her friend’s for more than a moment. Her gaze flickers between them, not knowing who to focus on.

She has Bow and Glimmer and they don’t fill the void, but they make her feel loved. Make her feel happy.

Built themselves into pieces she'd always been missing.

Adora knows that she’d have lost all the rest of herself if she’d lost Bow and Glimmer. There was already such a large endless hole in her gut, they were the reason she could keep it together. They were more of her than she thought she was sometimes. 

“We’re not going to give you a token today. And like, even when we do,, you don’t need to reciprocate or anything.” Glimmer gives her a small smile before continuing.

“But we do want to. So we thought we’d match so that like - we could show symbolically that you’re a part of us Adora. You have been for a while.”

“That if we ever lost you, we’d lose a part of ourselves too.” Bow adds and reaches out to Glimmer too - and then they’re all leaning forward, sitting on the picnic blanket, hugging awkwardly for everyone in the kingdom to see.

The tradition is not hers but the sentiment rings something bright and loud in her heart along with something deep and painful and she clings to the thought that maybe one day she will show her friends exactly how much they mean to her in a way which means something to them.

In a way which shows them she would not ever leave them behind.

“I love you guys so much.” Is what she gives them this year. Tears still flowing. “Thank you.”

Two hours later - well fed and comfortably staring up at the sky with small black crystals over their eyes to watch for the moment where Ehlo eclipses the sun and Diqueseus eclipses Ehlo - Adora concentrates on the pure joy she gets from her friends. 

The eclipse is a beautiful phenomena to witness and when it comes time for the bracelet tying, Glimmer is the only one who messes up, but its Bow’s and he doesn’t let her see that he needs to secure it himself when she draws away to start on Adora’s.

Adora manages to tie both of hers to Bow and Glimmer - though maybe a bit too tightly.

“How many knots did you use Adora!? I can’t loosen it!” Glimmer’s trying her best to loosen the vine constricting all blood-flow from her wrist but is having no luck.

“Here let me try.” Bow offers - having managed to loosen his own of Adora’s.

“Four?” Adora offers, smiling sheepishly. “I didn’t want you to have bad luck!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alrighty. Adora finally has some deep thinking and gets to be feel some happiness even amongst all of her insecurities! 
> 
> I had a great time inventing this festival. It was mostly born out of meditative shower thoughts when I was experiencing the most frustrating creative block of this whole story. I knew I needed a festival when I started writing, but I truly didn’t know how that was actually going to tie into the theme here. But we made it here and I quite like it.
> 
> Next up! Catra in the present having some thoughts too.


	6. Heart

When Catra is awake, the sun has risen. She can see it illuminating the world around the shadow of the barn she’s laying in. The fire is still crackling - having been freshly tended with a giant log; she can see its only singed at the edges. Sees the blackened carbon of spent timber haloed around the still brightly lit coals.

No one is around except for Melog - who is drinking water noisily from a mug near her head. 

Catra is pretty sure the loud slurping is what actually woke her up.

Her throat is raw, her head is pounding, there’s a sharp pain in her left side every time she inhales and the sun is already too bright even as it sits suspended somewhere out of view so she keeps her squinting gaze to the safety of the shadow, narrowing her eyes further as she fully focuses in on Melog. 

She’s pretty sure the mug was for her and that Melog still probably has their own giant bowl of water just inside the door of the barn. She’d filled it just before trying to get the firewood last night.

Before she was attacked.

“You know you could have drank your own.”

Fresh.

“Ugh.”

More in container.

Melog raises their head and juts their gaze over to the barn wall just behind them. Catra shifts to lay on her other side, but hisses in pain and ends up on her back instead. Something crunched in her left side as she shifted and the entire area feels like a giant bruise. She can feel her fur is dirty with some kind of now-dried salve. Her shoulder throbs as she shifts ever so slightly to get a look at the area Melog pointed out.

Her focus narrows in on Adora’s purple canteen. It’s in the shade so its probably not yet warmed by the morning sun.

“Since you’re so inclined to steal my water, you should bring it to me. I feel terrible.”

Melog ducks their head back to the mug and starts to drink again. Before Catra is able to think of some creative way to express her upset, their voice drifts in.

Okay.

So Catra waits a few heartbeats before resorting to a light growling and Melog finishes, padding over to the canteen and picking it up gently by a belt strap between their lips.

Catra sits up in anticipation. It takes her Melog’s entire trip back to do so, her fur puffs up as she swallows back the white hot pain and does not go without swearing to the stars now in the sky.

She runs her right hand through her still short hair and across her face - trying to wake up a bit more. She’s no stranger to waking up tired but it doesn’t suck any less.

“I hate losing. The pain feels so much worse when you lose.”

We won. You are safe now.

“Yeah… I guess.” Catra definitely does not feel like she won anything. 

Melog plops the canteen directly in her lap. It slides against the blanket on her lap and only triggers a small bit of hurt somewhere on her thigh.

She opens it and instead of pouring it into the now-empty mug, she drinks straight from the container. It’s kinda large between her hands and because its mostly full and her left arm is wobbly, its a bit cumbersome to not spill any across her chest or all over the blankets pooled across her thighs, but she’s thirsty and is pretty sure Adora won’t care too much that she’s not conforming to Horde sanitary regulations.

~

Catra waits around for about ten minutes before the stiffness and the run-over-by-a-wagon feeling just get to be too much in the silence of the field. Plus she doesn’t want to lay back down considering how hard that was the first time to get up from, and the shade is cold without being huddled deep in her nest of blankets. She wants to feel the sun across her back.

And she doesn’t know where Adora or Arrow Boy or Entrapta are and her chest is starting to feel tight and uncomfortable with the presence of that big question mark in the large expanse of a not-room laid out before her.

She gets up, slowly, using Melog’s shoulder to steady herself, and leaves the canteen laying across the mess of blankets. A sign she had been there.

“Where did everyone go?” Catra asks.

They were awake for much time. Adora is with Bow and went to the forest. Entrapta had a small shiny ball and went inside.

Melog shifts their gaze to the barn - towards the pile of Prime machinery and parts they’d amassed inside the structure.

I do not think she is there anymore.

“Yeah, I’m sure she would have heard me cussing Hordak’s name.” She scratches the crest of Melog’s head. “Let’s go find them then.”

Hurt.

“Eh, this is nothing. You should have seen me anytime after Lonnie and I got in a scrap. I was blue everywhere.” Catra laughs mirthlessly but stops as it triggers the sharp hurt in her left side. “She’d only ever fight dirty with me because she knew I would too.” She puts her hand back onto Melog’s shoulder - they grow to accommodate her so she leans a bit into them and starts to walk towards the barn.

She wonders where Lonnie is now. And Kyle and Rogelio. 

She hopes they’re okay. That they escaped Horde’s clutches unscathed. Maybe they were in the Fright Zone with Scorpia - reclaiming it now. Or maybe in the Crimson Wastes where all the Horde dissenters had gone to before the war had been over.

Her mind flickers back to their last interaction - the last months where she had ran them endlessly until even the soles of their boots needed replacing. Their bodies drooped across one another during morning briefings. The angry look in Lonnie’s eyes, the dragging toes of Kyle as he used Rogelio for balance not unlike Catra now leaning on Melog.

She frowns, ears idly lower against tuffs of her hair mussed by sleep.

She needs to find them. To try to make things better - to let Lonnie punch her across the face probably and give Rogelio a real apology. Something with a hundred times more words and five hundred times more embarrassing than ‘I’m sorry’. And probably introduce Kyle to cake or something and ask Glimmer what she can do to get them a cottage so they can try to live better lives in peace, no violence or orders to abide by and then probably leave them alone forever so she doesn’t have to cause them anymore suffering ever again. 

Melog trills at her. Her eyes shoot wildly over to look at her companion and their darkened magenta and swirling darker purple mane.

Catra really needs to walk. Too many thoughts. Too much going on. One problem at a time. 

Find Adora and Bow - or Entrapta. She could do that.

She really hopes they didn’t get captured. Catra is in no shape to save anybody right now. And Bow’s tracker pad is probably with him.

She looks down at what she’s wearing - her red sleep bandeau and loose dark navy cotton pants and decides she should probably change at least the pants first as they’re still covered in grass stains and dirt and blood. 

A few small burns are littered across a section of her thigh from the electric rod. She can see it through the giant burned tear. 

And she was right about her left side; she can see the discoloration even under her salve-matted fur. 

Catra goes to search through her meagre stash of clothes for something not too filthy from their work to wear and ends up brushing off the dried bits of whatever salve Bow or Adora had placed on her earlier. It wasn’t working anymore now, just made her look dirtier.

Settling on maroon tights with a dozen or so custom claw slits traveling down the entire side of each outer leg; it takes her at least ten minutes to get them on with her limited range of motion. Melog harangues her the whole time.

You should rest.

She ushers them out of the barn and manages to get the tights on, jaw sore from clenching her teeth for so long. She leaves the bandeau, figuring the tepid air of the morning will rise to warm fast enough. Especially if she’s on the move. She wraps the centre soles of her barren feet with dense black leather strips and buckles them at the ankle with some difficulty, needing to prop her foot on a shattered piece of armour to do so.

It’s the closest thing she’s ever worn to shoes, a gift from Bow she only accepted since Adora looked so excited by the idea. But she ended up liking them. They had conformed to her feet quickly and offered her far more protection from the destruction she had to pick through almost on the daily.

Catra does her best to raise her arms in a long stretch but, wincing even before her elbow passes her shoulder, decides that her morning stretches should be skipped. At least for today.

She turns to Melog as she leaves the barn housing all of their troupe’s things, who has decided to nest inside the pile of blankets in Catra’s absence. The canteen resting against their nose, a soft purring snore surrounding the empty air.

Catra must admit, its pretty cute so she looks at them for a minute. Remembering the moment they’d met. How scared she’d been. 

And sees how adorable they are now. How calm and full of love.

Melog raises their head as Catra taps their shoulder with one bare toe.

“Well, let’s go find Adora then.”

~

Catra wanders until the sun is noticeably higher in the sky and does not find Adora.

It’s a slow pace and she keeps her anxious mind from wandering too far by looking out across the scenery. She doesn’t go out of sight of the barn, mostly circles the property - checks in on the few animals in the pasture near the entrance to the farm and ends at the orchard where the second Prime tower hangs over the small river next to it.

It’s the first part of her journey where, even when she squints, she can no longer see the barn. It’s just farther than she was willing to go, but its the only place she can think of where Adora could be.

The pit in the bottom of her stomach has slowly grown as she has gotten closer but she tries to focus in on Melog’s presence. They could flicker into nothingness at a moment’s notice.

They are noticeably quieter than most days they’re alone together. Melog often divulges three hundred years worth of stories about Krytis, before Horde Prime wiped out the entire existence of their people, when its just them, which is often as Catra has tried to stay out of everyone’s space when Adora's not with her.

Catra gets more feelings and imagery through their bond than words but she listens all the same.

Or some days, Melog will start up on Catra’s least favourite thing and antagonize her about her own feelings. About working them through her fingers with gentle movements rather than trying to claw them apart.

She’s been hobbling along for over an hour now but there is no way to know exactly how long bit the muscles in her lower back and thighs start twitching in a way Catra can no longer ignore. 

Her breathing is noticeable shallow, any breath too deep and it shoves a knife deep into her ribs. She decides that she needs to sit somewhere before her body just gives up and collapses for her.

“Do you wanna go up there?” She juts her chin up the tower. There are various outcropping going up the Spire where sentinels would stand watch and flying drones would release from; which Catra knows will give her a vista of the landscape.

And Catra doesn’t want to be out in the open anymore - not even in the clear light of late morning - especially if she is going to rest. She feels like maybe she wandered too far from camp. There’s no way she could run back, though normally it would only be a couple minutes for her.

Melog doesn’t answer but continues to trot up to the door-less entrance with her and feeling of affirmation trickling down their bond. 

Entrapta had taken the door entirely apart as her first stage of decommissioning so that they all couldn’t get accidentally locked in while they salvaged the small chips and power supplies and communicators from the rooms which jutted off the spine of the tower.

Catra starts to climb up the spiral staircase in the centre. She wants to get to at least the halfway mark but her body won’t let her so she settles on the fourth level, heading straight for the slit in the hull where she knows an outcropping lays waiting for her.

With its electronics gone, the holographic looking ‘glass’ sealing the room had disappeared and only the view of the river and the treeline of forest behind it is visible. It juts out from the main way a few paces and has divot where a large telescope looking device had previously been attached before it had been removed and added to the pile of wonders now stacked in the barn.

Bow was arguably more excited than Entrapta when they chanced upon whatever those devices were.

The inside of the Spire had the same awful coloration as Prime’s ship, but needing to confine much more functional pieces of hardware and drone receptacles and portal jump-wires, it reminded Catra more of the haphazard machinery of the Fright Zone.

If it didn’t she probably could have never stepped inside.

Looking out across the landscape a pace from the railings, the want to perch on them is desperate. There is more than enough room for her practised body to lay across the metal ledge, even with being made far less graceful in her movements by the assault from earlier, but she can’t bring herself to do it.

She still remembers falling and hearing the resounding crack of her body.

And then the nothingness.

Catra squints. Her ears swivel outwards, listening. 

There was a voice somewhere close, its echoes were just reaching the very edges of her hearing. She can’t make out the words. Whatever they were saying was only a slightly unnatural rustle in the wind.

“Who do you think that is?” 

I will see.

Melog shimmers into nothingness and Catra is left in the tower alone. 

She wants to go and lean over to see if she could maybe see who was doing the yelling - if maybe it was Adora - but she moves to the side wall instead and places a hand in one of the dozen cubicles lining it and slides down to sit on the light gray tiled floor.

Curling her right knee up towards her chest, she plops her forehead across her arms and instantly falls asleep.

~

“Aw… you’re so cute.”

Catra opens her yellow eye to see She-Ra-as-Adora - panting from running up the stairs and smiling down at her from the entrance to the parapet. Even She-Ra can sweat, given enough running or elevation, and Catra can see it bead down from the bottom of her crown to travel down the sides of her face and across her neck. 

Catra wants to tell Adora to take that back. That she’s not cute - but she’s sitting there with her chin still resting on her arms and her now both opened eyes can’t stop looking at her own fuzzy colours reflected back in the gold of the crown - ever shiny, unmarred by battle, beautiful.

And hers.

Adora-as-Shera looks beautiful and Catra realizes that she loves that Adora wears her mask but it still rips into her that she doesn’t know why. That Adora has never said anything - that it feels like a secret when Catra makes every effort to tell Adora all of hers. Even the most painful ones when they wake her screaming in the dead of night.

Adora’s face has fallen into sadness. Catra doesn’t know when she looked away from the pointed edges of the mask, of the crown, but now she’s staring into Adora-as-She-Ra’s glowing blue eyes.

“Catra, why are you crying? Are you okay?”

She scrambles to get to her feet before Adora has the chance to make it to her to try to help her up. Her hinge to full height is painful but she makes sure to not let the poker-hot pain in her side show anywhere on her face.

“I - I need to ask you something.” Catra’s voice is stronger than she thought - the tears fall down her cheeks but there is no ball of tension blocking her voice-box. She needs to know. Right now. She needs to ask while her brain is still fuzzy from her catnap and before her foolish bravery runs dry.

“Catra, you know you can ask me anything.”

Adora-as-She-ra is looking down at her, an entirely non-existent wind billowing the long flowing wisp of her ponytail behind her. Catra has been wanting to ask this since she first saw Adora transform on Darla and she decided that she can - that she should right now but now she doesn’t know where the rest of her words have gone. She doesn’t know what words to use to ask, but she knows that she must.

She wills her feet to pad over the three steps she needs to get into Adora’s glowing space and raises onto the balls of her feet - extending a single finger to tap a claw on the perfectly shining gold plating framing Adora’s face.

Catra’s mask. On She-Ra form. On Adora.

“Why?” Her voice is barely a whisper.

Adora’s expression shifts - but Catra can’t quite tell to what. Maybe its too many things for her to know which one. Her breathing stilts, regretting the ask. She shuts her eyes to guard her heart from the negative reaction which is sure to fall from Adora’s lips.

“I wanted us to… match?” 

The answer sounds so much more like a question that it catches Catra’s mid-spiral and her eyes shoot wide open.

“What?!”

“I think.” Adora-as-She-Ra lets out an awkward giggle, relief painted across her face, and then light floods around them and standing before her is just Adora. She lifts her hand face-up, offering it to Catra as she walks towards her.

Catra uncurls the fists at her sides, and takes it, entwining their fingers together. They stay face to face as Adora continues.

“I mean… I didn’t really intentionally do it or anything but like… I think I know why She-Ra has your mask in her crown. My crown I guess.” 

Adora looks at her through her lashes, a bit uncertain. Catra softens her expression, waits.

The tears have dried to salty paths down her furred cheeks.

“I know in here.” Adora takes a step forward, She gently placing their joined hands on her chest - over her heart. Catra can feel where the edges of the Heart of Etheria have scarred the skin, even beneath Adora’s white shirt and she can’t help the frown from plastering to the sides of her mouth - though she knows Adora means her own literal heart.

“But I need some time to think of - how to say it in the way that I mean it.” 

“Okay.” The words are easy to say. Adora’s grey-blue eyes are searching for some kind of hurt in Catra’s mismatched eyes but there isn’t any there now. She’s too lost in the vulnerable and shy expression in Adora’s face - too engrossed in her own curiosity and too relieved that its not going to be secret to feel anything more. The uncomfortable unknowing still is like a rock in her stomach, but it doesn’t weigh her heart down in the same way anymore.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.” Catra drops their hands so she can shift closer - letting her head fall unceremoniously into the welcoming space between Adora’s neck and chest. Her other arm sluggishly wraps itself above Adora’s waist.

She starts to purr.

“Are you going to hug me back or what?” Catra mutters into Adora’s body when they’ve stood there for too long. “I’m not that broken.”

Adora slouches a little, relaxing, placing her own free hand on Catra’s back as Catra’s tail curls itself all the way up her wrist to her elbow. Adora’s arms are gentle when they wrap around her, with fingers which brush lightly up and down an unknown pattern into the exposed fur on Catra’s lower back.

No shirt was a good idea, Catra thinks. They stay like that for a long time. Melog doesn’t come back to join them.

Adora breaks the silence eventually. “When we get home maybe?”

Catra is already home in Adora’s embrace - but she knows that the princess means Brightmoon.

Catra nods into Adora’s frame - the muscle bouncy and firm beneath the movement. She loves how solid Adora is.

Catra purrs louder. She nuzzles her cheek against Adora’s neck and can practically feel the warmth of a blush radiating across Adora’s face.

She thinks she knows why She-Ra wears her mask - and its because She-Ra is simply Adora and she matters to her and Catra can be mostly okay with that.

But she’s still curious what Adora has to say on the situation.

And still a little afraid.

Catra pulls her head from its nest and looks at Adora, almost cross-eyed from the short distance between their faces.

“You’re beautiful - even if you look like shit.” Adora whispers, stopping Catra mid-movement forward. It’s still jarring anytime Adora swears.

Adora chuckles. Everything still hurts. So Catra believes her and lets the smile stretch across her face.

And then Adora shrinks the distance until there is no such thing. Their lips crash into one another and a hot shiver runs up Catra’s spine that she will never tire of. 

Adora pulls away slowly, regretfully and untangles her fingers from Catra’s to touch her cheek instead. Catra leans into the touch.

“I’m carrying you back now. No is not an answer.”

So Catra says nothing. Adora doesn’t even transform back into She-Ra to pick her up. Only lets Catra down to help her descend the stairs before picking her up again and starting back to camp.

Adora takes the shortest route - straight through the forest.

She starts huffing so loudly at the forest’s edge that Catra has to convince her to let her piggyback on Adora instead of carrying her between her arms. Hopping up onto Adora’s back is like no pain Catra has felt all morning and she needs to blink out the white flash that blinds her. But Adora’s hands are strong and though Catra can only grip onto her back with one arm, the other arm more wrapped around Adora’s neck for balance, she feels safe suspended in the air.

They reach the field and Catra still feels like shit - possibly worse - but she can walk.

“You can put me down now. We’re almost there.” 

They can see the smoke of their dying fire and what Catra is pretty sure are Bow and Entrapta’s heads floating above their camp’s sitting log.

“No.” Adora’s voice strains. Catra rests her chin on Adora’s head before quickly pulling back.

“Even your head is sweaty.”

“It’s not my fault you walked so far away.”

“It is that you won’t put me down.”

“I told you I was going to carry you back. So I am.” Adora lets out a grunt.

“You’ve already won you know. You don’t need to prove it.” Catra says softly.

It’s a moment before Adora answers.

“I’m going to anyways.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhhhh.... a true Catradora moment finally. Thank you all for waiting. They're so sweet my teeth hurt and so traumatized my heart hurts. 
> 
> So the entire idea of this exploration/character study/possible backstory fic idea was entirely started by the main summary blurb. It has actually remained 85% the same since I first jotted it down and this specific section was the bit I think I was the most excited to share because this is where that blurb lives. 
> 
> What's next you ask? Stars. :D Or possibly the lack of them? Or maybe some character development?
> 
> Again, thank you for reading this far and I am _excited_ to share the next bits!


	7. Stars

Adora can’t help but stare up at the emptiness of the night sky. She remembers the look of the stars. The flash of wonder when they’d flickered into existence when the portal had been eating at the world. It was the only other feeling she had felt at all during that day/week (time wasn’t particularily linear then) that wasn’t the constant whiplash between confusion and white hot fear.

And frustrated anger.

The sky had been void of them for a thousand years while Etheria sat in and continues to sit in Despondos due to Angella’s sacrifice - and if Adora could do anything about it - they would stay here void of them forever. She needs it this way to keep her friends safe.

To have Angella’s sacrifice not be in vain.

But she still can’t believe they exist somewhere. The stars - they were beautiful. She knows why the people of the past had been so tied to their formations, to their constellations. Why entire threads of their meanings had been carefully weaved into the stories and murals of the people. Why they adorned the largest of the giant scrolls in Bow’s fathers’s library - intricate patterns meticulously crafted across millennium old paper - the demonstration of an art form she could never touch in their absence.

And that absence makes Adora so incredibly angry.

She doesn’t like the anger, but it makes all of the hardest things easier to action on. If she’s angry then she can use that manic energy to battle the Horde. To win the war. To not think as she slashes bots into small fragments of metal or knocks out cold the soldiers of the Horde she knows were children once and so many of them not too long ago. So many she might have known.

Angry enough to find what little will she has to fight Catra. To keep her from winning. To keep herself from feeling. From remembering their past. Their shared childhood, their shared comforts, their closeness.

She cries most nights at the end, when she’s barely awake enough to keep her eyes open to the memory of the faded stars, or to stand on the chilly balcony at all. But she’ll usually manage to shuffle herself to bed. Only once near the beginning, before she had the memory of the stars twinkling down upon her, did she collapse on the terrace and wake frigid in the fall air a few hours later.

Only the moons above her saw her despondent and prone body not move when she woke. The longing stilling her ability to move her body back into the warmth and safety of the castle.

She hates trying to hate Catra, She hates trying to not miss Catra. 

She wishes she’d tried harder to go back in the beginning. To have taken Catra when she’d snuck back. When the sword had called to her - when the sword had chosen her. When she’d been forced to wield a weapon capable of decimating the world, the entire universe even. 

She had started her existance as an insignificant weapon of war and still that’s all she is - only now less expendable and faceless to the planet she occupies.

Now a beacon of hope. Or so they tell her. 

She wonders about Kyle, about how terrible they were to him. How their whole squad protected him from everyone else, in their own way, but they were still cruel a lot of the time.

She thinks about Lonnie’s strength, inside and out. Her determination. Her ability to best Adora in so many ways - just never quite in battle.

She thinks about Rogelio - about his fearlessness and his love of painting scrap metal in the earliest point of morning before the smog of the stacks had totally blotted out the light of morning.

In their small squadron they’d been told as a unit they would become more powerful by becoming less individual, more singular in intent, in routine; more similiar to one another.

But she knows now its their similarities which can bond them together - but its their differences which make them truly strong.

Be more like Adora.

Sometimes she hears Shadow Weaver’s voice. Not the one she hears sometimes trailing down the halls of Brightmoon, the voice Adora purposefully avoids, but the Shadow Weaver from the Horde. The one from her childhood. The one who told her she would be great. The one who told her she was only worth something if she could give her everything she had and still stand to fight the Princesses in the name of progress. In the name of order.

But there were always things Adora would never give to Shadow Weaver.

Her worst nightmares still have Shadow Weaver in them, with her swirling dark magic and careful threats, the talons of pain she would grip the members of her squadron in to keep them all in line.

The talons she most often used on Catra - because she knew Adora could handle her own pain and suffering.

But she could not handle Catra’s. Can't. Even now. 

Adora remembers the way her fist collided with Catra’s face. How the feeling still echoes across her knuckles when she sits alone too long.

Catra’s voice still echoes in her head.

“You made me this. You took everything from me.”

Her room is dark and empty as she shuffles to flop facedown onto her bed, still fully clothed in her now self-issued uniform. It feels grounding to have that always be the same when everything around her swirls into more and more difference.

The feeling of change is overwhelming tonight and Adora can’t even sneak into Glimmer’s room tonight to sleep next to her, to feel less like she’s drowning, to feel less cornered by her past.

But Glimmer and her don’t agree on where the Rebellion needs to go - what choice the Best Friend Squad needs to make - what path they’re going to walk on and Adora doesn’t know how to dance that dance when the last time that happened, she walked away from the most important person in her life and left her to suffer at the hands of the Horde.

At the hands of Shadow Weaver, whose hands now grip ever harder into Glimmer.

She’s not strong enough to lose someone she loves again.

Adora falls asleep to her own tattered sobs when the sky starts to colour itself into inky blues from the deep blacks of the night sky. The moons lessen their spotlights, the stars fade from Adora’s mind and birds slowly start to sing.

It’s the third time this week Adora will have fallen asleep to the sunrise and woken only two hours later. But by then she’ll have locked away her fears until the next sleepless night, instead standing tall and brave and strong for another day in the service of Etheria.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Adora is sad. I'm sad Adora is sad. But the sad is short (so I'm sorry?) but sometimes you gotta think through the sad to get to the less sad.


	8. Lab

Their two Etherian companions don’t get up when they hear Adora and Catra noisily trudging through the tall grass behind them, but they do wave.

Bow and Entrapta are cross-legged on the ground next to the sitting log - a series of small round metal bots are perfectly lined up behind them on said log. Melog’s body comes into view. They are asleep, face squished and leaning against Bow’s hip, body normal-sized, feet twitching with dreams.

Adora finally puts Catra down on her feet on the opposite side of the log, and keels over to catch her breath.

Catra pats her back lightly.

“Hey! I see you found Catra.” Bow turns to look at them. “See Adora, Melog wouldn't have been sleeping if they were worried.”

“Yeah Adora.” Catra taunts her, letting her face climb into a big smile. “But I am glad you did.”

Adora fake scoffs.

“Melog only came back after I found her.” She reaches out and ruffles some of the short hair behind Catra’s ear. “And you wanted a free ride back.” 

“Exactly.” Catra drapes her good arm around Adora’s waist, fingers kneading the soft bit of flesh above Adora’s hip.

Its a comfort to know that Adora can roll off of her sweetness with sarcastic tact. It makes it easier for the sincere words to flow without leaving Catra thinking too hard about how vulnerable exposing her feelings like that makes her feel.

It's hard even around Adora’s - her friends. But she’s trying. Just the other day she gave Bow a half second sidehug after he’d made fun of Adora’s hair poof. Progress.

“So we have some good news…” Bow starts. “Well mostly Entrapta does!”

Catra tries to keep up with the explanation as Entrapta rises on the ends of her hair and hovers in front of her and Adora - holding out one of the small bots. It’s single green orbs and size legs somewhat reminiscent of Entrapta’s Horde bots.

Entrapta goes on to explain something around building a prototype in the night from bits and pieces they’d already gathered from the first tower and stored in the barn. 

That these bots were small hovering drones which could make their way throughout the spires, manouvering throughout the small spaces behind the paneled walls (if their group took them down first of course) and could finish most of the tedious work of gathering the tech for them. 

When Adora had left to find Catra, Entrapta and Bow had started on a small army of them. They were almost done, most of their componentry already assembled, Bow just had to program them based on Entrapta’s prototype while she built the last of them. 

And the bots could show a ‘vision’ of what they saw on the tracker pad and could be remote controlled using some kind of radio waves.

Which means they could leave early. The next afternoon even. All of them. Four days early. All they needed to do was open up all the compartments where they could salvage tech from.

Its all very exciting, the thought of going back to Brightmoon. Of getting to sleep on the Adora’s bed - with Adora tucked across her chest. 

Catra is getting tired again. The details Entrapta and Bow are spilling, which usually she would find at least mostly interesting, just float above her attention.

Each time she blinks she practically falls asleep, only woken by the searing in her ribs that kicks up as she loses her perfect posture standing next to Adora. She leans ever so slightly into Adora’s side and relieves some of the strain of gravity. If Adora notices she makes no physical response. Just takes on Catra’s weight like it means nothing as Catra lets more and more of her body merge into Adora’s. She lets her eyes stay shut longer each with each blink.

Bow has stopped but Entrapta is still talking. Explaining her plan. She focuses on Entrapta’s animated face when her eyes open to slits, trying her best to stay awake. Catra notices the tech princess has dark purple circles gathering in the hollows of her eyes. They match nicely with her hair.

She suspects hers look the same. Catra makes a mental note to not look at her appearance until she’s slept more than three hours for fear of seeing the nightmare of her own face staring back at her.

“You see - it has these teeny tiny light mirrors here and this really big sensor that looks like an eye because its basically an eye - and I can program them to go in and tear apart all of the green cables! And that’s all it needs to do to decommission the weapons system!”

She cackles - holding her little ball bot in one hand and an absolutely ridiculous amount of green cables in the other hand. 

“They have this weird psychic membrane in them and without them none of the terminals or weapons systems or propulsion systems know how to talk to one another and so everything is safe to explore! Which means I can then use the tracker pad to analyze the more nitty gritty stuff without destroying that tech!”

Entrapta’s eyes grow so wide, Catra can see her own reflected back in the magenta. 

“It’s not like we can really haul thousands of tons of this metal back to Brightmoon anyways and this last Tower isn’t going to prevent farmers from growing crops here so no point in really taking it down.” Bow adds. “I’ll come back here - maybe with Swift Wind and we’ll pick up the wires and some of the more valuable chips and pieces in a couple days and find someone to take over this plot for the next season.”

“And I will need to visit Scorpia to get some of those Horde transports to take all this back to Dryl.” Entrapta’s voice is dreamy and she’s no longer looking at any of them, but instead is staring deeply at the tech. 

Her face falls and a little ‘oh’ escapes her lips.

She doesn’t explain why, instead pulls down her visor and says behind the metal.

“I need to go find a sensor.”

Entrapta’s reaction clicks something in Catra’s brain and her eyes shoot open - startled realization shaking her to attention. She squeezes Adora’s side - dropping her arm down. Dryl is not Brightmoon.

Entrapta has already lifted her body off the ground with her hair. Catra needs to be quick.

Hordak is still in Brightmoon - and will be for the foreseeable future. Limited to the East quarter with a permanent two person guard. Castle arrest in a kingdom where they don’t have a dungeon. Slated for five years of some kind of cleanup duty when things have calmed down a little bit.

Catra doesn’t like it because Catra still doesn’t like him - still doesn’t forgive him, but he doesn’t scare her anymore. She understands a bit. Knows what it was like to have your mind ravaged of all its will.

She doesn’t forgive him.

But maybe if she can be better - maybe he can be to - given enough time and effort.

And she’s pretty sure Hordak won’t be better unless Entrapta is there to inspire him as her ‘lab partner’.

She doesn’t like the parallels she sees drawn between her in and him in her peripheral mind, but she accepts them, choosing to not dive too deeply for fear of drowning in it.

She knows at the very least if she deserves a chance, he deserves one too.

“Entrapta wait.” Standing was bad, walking is worse - but Catra puts one foot in front of the other and takes two limping steps forward. “I don’t use the room Sparkles gave me - you can - eh - have it for your science or make it into a lab or whatever.”

Bow looks at her with a weird expression and she can practically hear the gears trying to wobble some sense into Adora’s head behind her. She’ll explain more explicitly to her later she figures.

It’s true that the few nights they’ve spent in Brightmoon were in Adora’s room - that Adora had explicitly offered for Catra to stay there any (and/or every, night) but Catra hadn’t really said explicitly that she would. That she wanted to.

Never really gave Adora a real answer. But then again, Adora had only ever asked her once.

Sparkles had given Catra her own room, which was an exciting thought considering her entire life had been in a shared space until she’d become Force Captain - but it was truly horrible in practice. The bed was large and cold and the noises in the castle were small and echoing and triggered too many thoughts of long identical corridors and echoes across an expanse of time which had no meaning and she just hurt with how much she missed Adora.

She was thinking from only one experience - their first night back at the castle when Adora had gone to her room and passed out in her clothes on top of the blankets, before Catra had finished talking with Glimmer about things she shouldn’t even start thinking about right now. She’d come back to Adora’s room (after getting lost twice) and seen an entirely unconscious Adora drooling facedown into her pillow, so Catra had gone back to her freshly given room and had tried - really tried - to sleep there.

But she couldn’t, so she snuck back into Adora’s room and slept at the foot of her bed - like she had for their entire childhood - and when Adora had woken her up with puppy dog eyes just as the sun had risen, she’d asked her why she didn’t sleep under the covers with her.

And Catra had explained Adora had in fact not slept under the covers.

“Well then next to me! You know what I mean Catra.”

That was a fun conversation in feelings. And a fun experiment in talking through her own uncertain ones. The first of many exposures of secrets that Catra didn’t know she kept. Ones she’d hidden away even from herself from when Adora had left. 

The ones Adora had kept from herself too. The lonely nights Adora had spent awake and looking across the expanse of the Whispering Woods.

Her ears droop.

She’d slept in Adora’s bed ever since - tucked neatly against her chest - or sprawled across her torso - or nuzzled into her back. And always under the covers (even if Adora didn't).

Most nights Melog laid across her legs in various sizes. Or growing sizes, or shrinking as they dreamed.

Catra blinks a couple times, sucking herself back to the moment at hand and wipes aways any semblance of the content look on her face caused by the memory of a comfortable sleep with Adora.

The most important detail of the gifted room had been that Glimmer had given Catra it with the exact words, “This is yours. Do whatever you want with it. Redecorate - put in a climbing wall or a bird watching perch” She had grinned widely at Catra. Catra had stuck out her tongue at the Glimmer. “Consider it one of many thank yous for saving me. And saving Adora.”

With Glimmer’s hand on her shoulder, Catra intended to take those words as contract.

“Sparkles said I could do whatever I want with that room so like… you can have a lab in Brightmoon and like. Stay.”

Entrapta violently rips the mask up with momentum of her hair and it almost falls off her head. Another tendril catches it and secures and she shrieks.

“Another lab?”

“Yeah.” Catra offers a small grin. “I bet you if you want a third even, Scorpia would love to have you over in the Fright Zone.”

Catra could only hope Scorpia would want to have her over sometime too. She misses both of them. She wants to spend time with them doing things that don’t end in grief and pain. She wants their friendship desperately, even if she doesn’t deserve it. Even if she took advantage of it and hurt them. She wants to make it right and she doesn’t know how, but she figures the only way now is forward. 

So she’ll keep trying. 

Scorpia already said they were cool, but Catra didn’t feel like telling Scorpia she could hug her almost anytime she wanted would be enough to earn back her trust.

Maybe it's a bit selfish - giving Entrapta her room so she can maybe have an excuse to try to be around her again - to do whatever Entrapta needs Catra to do to be trusted again, but it's mostly because she wants Entrapta to be happy. 

Even if it's Hordak of all people who is the root of that happiness.

Catra shudders at the thought.

Plus she figures that she was a more dangerous foe at her worst and they accepted her into Brightmoon. Even though she sent Entrapta to Beast Island - there isn’t much worse she could have done to someone living apart from the other awful thing she caused - the portal and …

Nope, shouldn’t go there now. Too much.

So if that ex-warlord shut in makes Entrapta happy then Catra’s not going to question it unless he’s actually a danger.

Then the claws will come out.

Literally.

“That would be AMAZING.” Entrapta bounds on her hair into Catra’s space and places a tendril of hair on her shoulder. It makes Catra’s heart skip a little. “Thank you.” Then Entrapta squeals and practically attacks Bow - face inches from his, her hair flowing around him in wild gesticulations. 

“You can use it too! We’re going to make so many spaceships! And then go to space! AGAIN.”

If they went to space again, Catra wouldn’t complain. As much as so much awful had happened there - something about the quiet and the stars was peaceful to her. Maybe it reminded her of finally sleeping tucked against Adora’s chest, safe. Or maybe it was the thought of stepping foot on other planets like they’d done when first stepping foot on Krytis. It had been thrilling once the fear had settled. She’d met Melog that way.

Or maybe it was that it reminded Catra that things could change. Whole planets could shift from empty dimensions, stars could come back into existence, finally admitting you love your idiot could cause that same idiot to save the universe - to live.

They could do good things in space. Change things. Heal entire worlds. Catra was liking doing good things, it made people better.

They’d talked about going back to space in the euphoria of saving the world, bringing magic back to the universe before the very real and very urgent plights of the people of Etheria had worn heavy on their time. 

Adora had spoken to her about fulfilling their space adventure only one other time after the euphoric aftermath of the Heart. It was the night before they’d left for this salvage mission and Adora had sounded so unsure if she could escape the planet’s need of She-Ra. 

But Catra was willing to convince her - to tell Adora that Etheria did not deserve to shackle Adora to its needs forever.

And with Entrapta now guaranteed to be in Brightmoon far more than anyone would have ever bet on - she was pretty sure going back to space was inevitable.

A happy side effect.

But the thoughts of space and the planet and even lunch were fading from Catra now. Falling asleep standing staring out across the fields, she turns back to make her way to Adora and actually stumbles but Adora catches her mid-fall. 

But Adora’s hand grasps her at the edge of the hurricane of throbbing injury in her side and Catra hisses in air to quell the need to leap away, instead stepping forward out of Adora’s now limp fingers, away from the tender area. Catra lets her claws bite into her palms to try to divert the agony coming from her left side.

Bow and Entrapta silence, and look straight at Catra.

“I think I should lie down for a bit. No Adora. I don’t need you to carry me twenty feet to the left.” Catra forces her voice to more of a grumble than a growl. It’s hard but she’s pretty sure she manages to not sound angry. She’s not. It’s just… agony.

Adora lets out a single nervous laugh - she’s right behind her now. Catra was pretty sure she had her arms out to to try to sweep her into them.

Entrapta cocks her head and then turns back to Bow and starts talking to him again - he looks very interested in what she’s saying and his tracker pad is open, fingers typing across it frantically. Catra can only understand the words they are saying - not the meaning behind any of them shoved together into sentences.

She takes an experimental shuffling step forward. Doesn’t fall. The pain is horrible, but manageable. Pushes it to the back of her mind and focuses on the pile of bedrolls and blankets. She’ll be there in seconds, just a few steps, then she can rest.

“Can I join you at least? I didn’t sleep at all.” Adora’s voice is quiet, unsure.

Catra remembers waking up to see Adora staring up at the stars - and having her blanket even then. She knows Adora wouldn’t have slept. She’d have watched over Catra all night long.

“You’re such an idiot.” Catra’s voice is a lot softer this time- inviting even in its sarcasm.

Catra stops her shuffling steps and reaches her hand back behind her, waiting for Adora to entwine their fingers together. 

She does immediately. They walk hand in hand to the bedroll laid out in the bright noon sun next to a now deadened fire.

It’s only craddled in Adora’s embrace as she’s laying her tail around Adora’s calf, closing her eyes against the bright blue sky, that it dawns on her.

Adora hadn’t been watching her the entire time she was asleep.

“Where were you all when I woke up?” It’s practically a mumble and Catra isn’t even sure Adora hears her. Moving her tongue around her mouth is hard, sleep is laying its inevitability over her quickly.

“Catching breakfast.”

“All three of you?”

“Bow and I - I think Entrapta was doing the bot stuff in the barn.”

“So you left me alone, sleeping out in the open, after a group of… theives?” Catra scrunches her face, opens her eyes and tilts her head to look into Adora’s grey-blue eyes. She doesn’t think its the right word but she doesn’t know what to call them. “Beat the living crap out of me?”

“Oh… I don’t think they will come anywhere near here until long after we’re gone. Only two of them had any combat training at all and I may have been a tad bit - aggressive with the intimidation.” Adora looks so sure of her answer. Even closes her own eyes and snuggles her chin closer into Catra’s shoulder where it rests.

“Hm.” Catra offers, still confused and a little peeved. “Did you think that maybe that wasn’t all of them?” 

Adora stays quiet.

Catra can hear Adora’s heartbeat. It quickens. 

She shifts her head back to its facing the sky, closes her eyes. Waiting.

“No?” 

“No.”

“You’re an idiot. For real this time.” 

“Catra I wasn’t far away at all - Melog was here and -”

Catra messily smacks her hand across Adora’s lips, silencing her. She doesn’t move her hand.

“Think before your stomach next time.” She lets her hand drop. “Now shush, I’m tired. Stay here.” Her eyes close again, settling quickly into the fuzzy sensation of sleep.

“I promise.” 

Adora’s voice is muffled and far away but Catra thinks it sounds kinda like she’s kicked Swift Wind but she’s too tired to continue being angry and is satisfied enough with the level of suffering she knows Adora is going to put her brain through for the next fifteen sleepless minutes before she too inevitably passes out.

Fifteen minutes feels too long. Ten feels more humane to Catra so she doesn't let the silence stretch.

“I do love you though. Even if sometimes your stomach makes you stupid.” 

And dutifully, as always, Adora replies.

“I love you too.” And snuggles as close as she possibly can against Catra's good side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Snuggles! To make up for the sad of the last chapter and also because I'm a big sap. As you can see... this is ~mostly about exploring feelings. Hope you're having fun - its almost over... although in posting this I've rekindled my inspiration for the immediate-day-after-The-Heart story I had started on even before this story was an idea... so y'all might have that to look forward to "soon". Not sure how soon but... I unblocked myself from the ending so I'm pretty certain it will happen considering its halfway written. :D 
> 
> As always thank you for continuing to read and I greatly appreciate all your comments! :) (even if its just emojis 🦄)


	9. Rib

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go! 
> 
> Kadroh is wrong Hordak. It seems the fandom sorta-kinda settled on that as a more proper name but I dunno who came up with it first, but it fits so it sits. 
> 
> We've got more feelings abound. And a Perfuma cameo! There's also a POV switch mid-chapter which I don't normally do - but I think it works (there's a ~ linebreak there so its not all chaos) 
> 
> :)

There is only one mode of transportation that Catra hates more than Sparkles’ magic - and that is flying on Swift Wind.

Her fur is still out of sorts from the gusts, she can barely hear anything from the excessive whooshes of air beating into the sensitive caverns of her ears and her body is chilled to the bone from the wet iciness of the clouds Swift Wind insisted they dive through because it would be fun. 

Not to mention her stomach still feels like its doing loop-dee-loops even now with her bare feet firmly back on the ground in Brightmoon’s castle. The air is humid and warm and there are no more loop-dee-loops.

She’s in Adora’s room - their room now. 

It would feel more official if Catra really had anything to move from her room to Adora’s but all she has is what small amounts of clothing (mostly stolen from Bow and Adora’s collections of civilian clothes) and necessary survival gear (given with Glimmers blessing from the armory) she had needed for their trip. They hadn't even seen the passing of two months since defeating Horde Prime so Catra had only exactly what she needed and all of it had been with her on their mission at the farm in a collection of two backpacks.

She doesn’t even have most of those things now - her and Adora each only brought back one pack apiece - the rest is still with Melog, Bow and Entrapta while they wait for some last minute help from Scorpia, who sent an old Horde transport to haul them, their camping stuff and the Entrapta-deemed necessary tech back to the castle while Adora and Catra travelled back early on Swift Wind. 

They'd managed to eat through most of the food supplies they'd originally hauled with them, even with leaving four days early, leaving far more room for packing tech, but Entrapta insisted she needed to start on building the lab right away and filled all empty space with whatever tech she could find and more. There was no way they could lug it all the four hour walk back to Brightmoon. Especially since Adora would have probably had to carry Catra’s stuff (and maybe even Catra if she was being honest).

So Adora, with a lot of additional convincing by Bow, managed to get Catra to agree to leave early on Swift Wind so she could get some rest.

Catra grins, eyes still closed with her dirty body splayed against the very Adora-smelling bed, remembering the red-faced-with-frustration Adora just seconds before Catra agrees.

Her mind wanders back to the troupe they left behind. To the ridiculous pile of tech they’d watched vanishing in the distance that Entrapta guaranteed she needed for her new lab.

Catra is going to love breaking the news of the lab to Sparkles. Something about the absolutely explosion levels of smoke rising from her ears just brings Catra so much joy. 

She’ll make sure to ask Kadroh to make Sparkles a cake first. Something to calm the wonderful storm just in case Queen Sparkles decides she’s going to torture her with some kind of awful job in return. It needs to say something really good - something like ‘let’s hope science isn’t what destroys the castle’ but wittier. Maybe ‘Praying for small explosions only’. 

But that’s a tomorrow problem. Catra has no intention of leaving their room now that she is laying in it. Right now everything still hurts and she just wants to lay back and wait for Adora to come and snuggle with. Her calloused but tender hands softly petting down the length of her fur takes away the focus from the worst of the pain and Catra knows that she will give her ridiculous girlfriend one very wide eyed look from the comfort of the pillow fort she’s in and the blonde won’t be able to resist.

One day isn’t enough to heal her extremely bruised and mildly burned body, so when Adora finally enters almost half an hour later - breathing heavier than normal hauling both their filled with dirty-laundry packs, Catra makes no effort whatsoever to move; she’s not asleep, she’s not even actually tired having slept almost the entire day before. Her ears are turned towards the slightly open balcony door and she’s listening to the birds chirping outside, but they swivel over to the door when the double set of footsteps indicates that Adora is not alone.

“Catra - you know you look awful right?” Is the first thing Glimmer says to her, announcing her very Queenly presence.

It is easy to see how badly she’d been beaten up, as Catra opted to strip out of all her outdoor clothes and kicked them half under the bed before hopping onto the purple blankets.

But still, rude.

“Tell that to Adora an hour ago.” Catra snides. “She thought I looked pretty hot then.”

“Catra!” Adora’s voice has risen almost two full octaves. Catra’s hears the backpacks get dropped at the foot of the bed. Her ear flicks. Her eyes are still closed, smile still a strong smirk.

The only person she loves teasing more than Sparkles is Adora.

“Is thinking I’m hot really that scandalous Princess?” 

Adora makes a cute whine-grunt noise and then the bed jiggles and the dip is just too far away from her to reach out her hand, so she uses her tail instead. 

Finding thigh, it drapes over it.

A hand brushes it away. 

“Hey!” Catra can’t help the exclamation, eyes finally shooting open with her words. Adora never denies her tail.

“Not a Princess, Horde scum.” 

“Ugh.” She doesn't even need to scan the room to see Adora standing fully in front of her, arms crossed, left eyebrow raised with her own smirk - her eyes are instantly drawn to her. “Why are you here Sparkles?”

Catra voice is only slightly annoyed, but mostly in the direction of Adora who is still grinning down at her like an idiot. Adora’s foot kicks out and boots Catra lightly in the shin hanging off the bed.

She looks away from Adora's gaze. She won't give her the satisfaction of any kind of reaction and it's hard to do that when Catra looks up at her goofy beautiful face and all she wants to do is smile back.

She gingerly crosses her arms instead and tilts her face to look at Glimmer.

It’s nearing dinner and Glimmer is dressed for it. Being Queen has made most evening meals excessively formal and even with only needing to have attended the most mandatory of them, Catra is already sick of them. She knows Glimmer is too. She’s told her so herself while half-draped over her desk reading out various scrolls and receipts and letters when Glimmer just can’t grip the papers without accidentally lighting them on fire.

Catra is sick of those too.

They’re not even that helpful. Most of the royal court don’t know the back-end of a mule from the back-end of a cart and their suggestions are outlandish and often would be overruled by the actual faction advisors as soon as they came up in those more relevant meetings.

Catra can’t help but wonder if there is a way to streamline the entire process. The requests need to get through - but it seems backwards. Someone other than Glimmer (and whenever she’s in the castle, often Catra) should be sifting through these to give to the actual department heads. Then Glimmer could actually prioritize the tasks the factions are going to be actioning on.

Catra is diving deeper into the idea when Glimmer jabs her in the calf to get her attention. 

“Adora wanted to make sure I knew you guys were back. And also wanted a second opinion of you.”

“She has that second opinion. I think I'm pretty great really.” 

Glimmer gives her a look, but its rooted deeply in concern.

“I wasn't kidding. You look awful. Adora is just too nice to say anything to you. I on the other hand, don’t need to be nice.”

Catra crosses her arms across her chest. One of them she roughly bandaged up that morning and it loosened in violent winds of the sky. She shoves it up to cover the missing fur patch and red raw skin from where she’d skid across the ground at some point in the scuffle.

There’s nothing on her body though to cover the dark bruise on her left side which sits just under her bandeau. It’s faced towards Glimmer so she knows that the Queen can see it. Catra isn’t shy, since being in the castle, she often wears as little as possible. Fur is dangerously insulating during the humid and windless summer and here the only people around are usually Adora, Glimmer and Bow.

But now Catra feels self conscious of all the new marks across her body. And some of the spindly old ones she tries to forget about too… but maybe crossing her arms wasn’t the best tactical move to get Sparkles to leave her alone with Adora. To stop looking her over broken body with a sad frown.

“Hey!” Adora exclaims. She’s no longer looking at Catra, instead pouting at Glimmer guiltily. “I tried okay! I mean. At least she let me fly us back.” 

Adora's voice ends very small. 

Catra isn't so sure she likes that. Mentally kicks herself for making Adora feel bad about the whole ordeal with Swift Wind. Even if she absolutely hated it and almost lost her lunch after. It was already hard to eat with her side aching so badly, she was feeling a bit protective of the precious contents of her hungry stomach and may have been feeling grumpy when she told Adora she was going to lie down as soon as they’d touched down.

“Yeah, well. You try getting kicked and electrocuted and then sleep on the ground for two days. Let me know how you look. ”

The edge to Catra’s voice is gone. It sounds kind of sad, even to her. 

“It sucks.” She scoots up on the bed and sits up, raising her feet in front of her makes her suck in a hiss as the bottom of her boxers slide up against the burn on her thigh and something crackles in her bad side and she can’t help but force all the air out of her lungs in a loud huff. She releases her half raised feet down to remain dangling over the side of the bed, places her palms against the bed and leans forward to try to release the onset of spasms starting across her left side.

The flying may have aggravated whatever was going on there too.

Both Glimmer and Adora look at her, faces frozen in concern, waiting.

“I’m tired and everything hurts. I love you Sparkles - I really do and thanks for your concern but I just want to go to bed.” The words are said through clenched teeth. Her hands shake against the blanket as she tries to not flex her fingers into them, claws and all.

“I think you need to see a healer Catra.”

A bell tolls in in the hallways. Dinnertime. Glimmer makes no physical response to the sound, even though it means she should already have been there ten minutes ago.

Catra offers nothing, so Glimmer tries agin.

“Adora says you won’t let her try to use She-Ra’s magic.”

“I’ll be fine in a couple of days.” Catra says quickly, too quickly, voice tight, eyes darting over to Adora before finding a smudge on the floor because she can’t look at the sadness in Adora’s grey-blue eyes.

“Please, Catra.” Adora tries. Has tried all day, and yesterday, in every moment Catra had spent awake - which honestly wasn’t much. She basically hadn’t left their bedroll the entire day yesterday except for dinner.

“No, my body can heal itself.”

Glimmer stands and comes right up to Catra, their knees bump together as she looms over her. Her hands are on her hips and she looks more than a little bit angry.

“I was hoping that you would grow up and let us help you. There is absolutely no reason why you need to suffer through this. I know you have at least a broken rib since you can’t especially hide that kind of thing from Adora when you two are practically glued together and you can barely move, even sitting down!”

Catra’s ears have shot all the way back against her head. Glimmer hasn’t yelled at her in what seems like forever now. She doesn’t really know what to say to Glimmer.

She doesn’t want to see She-Ra right now. Not when Adora still hasn’t told her why she wears her mask, though she’s more at peace knowing she eventually will know. But it still rubs a sensitive part of her that she’d rather not deal with right now. 

And she especially does not want She-Ra’s healing when she knows it makes Adora feel weak in her own human body for days. Catra remembers the dark circles, the slow and aching way Adora moved on Darla, even as Catra did her best to ignore Adora, to push her away. And most of all she remembers the second night after their first kiss, after Adora had spent the entire day as She-Ra healing the worst of the injured civilians they’d chanced upon on their way back to Brightmoon.

There had been so many of them. Dozens.

She remembers the way Adora leaned on her after, when she finally shrunk to her normal dirty-clothes self and said they were going to make camp. The way she silently cried in their tent, face turned away from Catra, admitting that she thought the Heart would have made the deep ache in her bones more bearable after healing people. But healing living flesh and blood pulled something from She-Ra - from Adora - that healing the magic of the planet did not do. 

Not to mention the sickening echoes that any magic that isn’t Melog’s alien and water-like sensations feel just as horribly like electricity shooting through her muscles like the stun wands do; like Shadow Weavers magic always did.

Like maybe they still do.

Catra knows she can handle the pain with enough distraction and sleep and her body will heal. As it always did. She just wants Adora to lay in bed with her to make that part easier. She just needs time. And rest.

“Catra. What is going on.” 

It’s Glimmer who is talking but its Adora Catra looks at.

Her grey-blue eyes are cast at her feet and she’s just behind Glimmer with her hands wrung around themselves. Adora can’t even look at her.

Adora looks so torn. Like she’s betrayed Catra.

Catra doesn’t feel betrayed. Mostly achy and proud and annoyed and scared and like she needs to protect Adora. But she can see she’s doing a shit job at the last part.

“Adora?” She calls lightly, ignoring Glimmer who is practically fuming through the ears.

Adora gazes up at her slowly.

“Can you come here?”

Compliant, Adora sits beside Catra. Glimmer has backed off a step to let Adora into their space. Catra looks back at Glimmer who is still sternly staring her down and Catra can tell it's taking all of the Queen’s will to not say something. She knows its a short fuse she’s playing with.

She reaches for Adora’s hand and it grabs hers back, entwining their fingers.

She can be better. She can do this.

“I know She-Ra’s healing hurts Adora. Don’t say it doesn’t.” She squeezes Adora’s hand for emphasis, knows she’d want to deflect, to justify it. But Catra can't stomach causing anymore suffering for Adora, not when she can very well handle it herself. 

“I remember how exhausted you were when…” Her voice trails away. She can’t go there right now. This is hard enough. Her other hand grabs at the blankets beneath her to prevent the hand from rubbing at her neck.

“And magic… feels.” Catra can’t look at Glimmer anyway. She shuts her eyes tightly, willing the memories of dark swirling energy crackling and burning skin to not bring out the tears now. Not now.

She swallows them back.

“Invasive.”

It’s not a lie, but she doesn’t need to convey how wrong it makes her feel. Doesn’t need to tell them how it burns into her. Doesn’t need to bring this all up just as they’ve gotten back to Brightmoon - are supposed to take time to enjoy each other.

“I don’t need it. I’m just planning on staying in bed. For days.”

“Not all healers use magic.” Glimmer offers, her face losing some of its frustrated tightness. Catra suspects Glimmer sees more meaning behind her limited confession. “Most of them are just… regular people. And some of them are Princesses - who also don’t use magic.”

“Who?” Adora interjects, earnest curiosity blowing the word across Catra’s ear before she can process anything.

“Perfuma actually!” Glimmer responds. “I mean… she uses magic to grows some of the herbs and flowers to make medicines, but she’s actually the person whose trained at least twenty percent of our primary field medics.”

Catra plays with the thought in her mind. Bats it around for a moment. She doesn’t mind Perfuma. Oddly, she trusts her. She’s one of the only princesses who actually turns and smiles at her when she enters a room. 

And Scorpia makes heart eyes at her that she used to make at Catra. The kind which Catra found made her feel itchy.

And Perfuma’s magic doesn’t apply to anything but plants so Catra feels like maybe she could be safe. Catra’s not a plant. Even if she did use magic, it wouldn’t be at Catra.

Plus, the crackling in her rib does not make her feel very good at all and not being able to eat enough is getting to be a big downer. She’s turned down at least three opportunities to steal Adora’s food this morning alone.

“Oh. I saw her before I found you Glimmer. She’s even here Catra!” Adora sounds desperately excited.

Glimmer actually starts to smile.

“Yeah - she’s here with Scorpia. I think… they’re a thing now? They’re actually probably waiting for me at dinner. We’re trying to draw up some plans for the Fright Zone - get some housing in place for some of the clones and Horde soldiers and train up some civilians to act as reintroduction specialists. I’ll go get her so you can talk to her Catra! You can say no to my face once you hear her out.”

And with a Pop! Glimmer is gone.

Catra feels more than a little steamrollered.

“I’m sorry.” Adora doesn’t even let the magic sparkles fizzle out of being before the words come tumbling out of her mouth. “You just kept brushing me off everytime I asked and I thought maybe it was because you were mad I wouldn’t tell you why I think She-Ra adopted your mask and I just … I don’t want you to be hurt. Not when I can make it go away.” 

Adora’s head lightly rests on Catra’s shoulder. Adora probably doesn’t even notice how hard she’s squezing Catra’s hand or how its trembling. 

“You don’t need to suffer through this. Please. I want to help you. Just, give Perfuma a chance.”

Catra’s heart aches so much more than her body. 

Of course Adora thinks she’s mad at her. It’s what she did when they’d grown into young adults once Catra’s violent outburts as a kit had only ever gotten her in trouble with Shadow Weaver. She’d turn the anger inwards, no matter who had caused it, and would glaze over the source with mud until it suffocated inside her. 

She’d move the subject, toss anything else around to avoid what was actually bugging her because there was nothing she could do about it. There was no solution which could ease those emotional burns, nothing which could bandage the cuts of a thousand blades that had torn into her to expose weakness.

And Adora had seen it all. Had felt it all. Both source and victim of the things she would actively ignore. Sometimes for days at a time.

And now Catra feels that anger again, not directed at Adora, but it will not miss her either if she doesn’t acknowledge it. Catra breathes deeply and remembers Krytis. Melog - how not all magic hurts. 

How She-Ra-as-Adora healed her…

Adora-as-She-Ra healed her. Was brought back from the void of nothingness twice, and their own drip of death because Adora loved her. And that must mean She-Ra loved her too.

She doesn’t remember what She-Ras magic felt like when she pulled Catra from death - doesn’t know if it hurt her - can only zero in that she still doesn’t know exactly why it's Catra’s mask Adora-as-Shera wears and on the feeling of dark electricity lighting her entire body aflame anytime magic has coursed aross her skin.

She blinks back the discomfort of the present and the pain of the past and the anger slows it's boil - instead it parts it's bubbling water to show Catra the fear of disappointment the duelling memories share.

“Okay.” She tilts her head to bump lightly into Adora’s. Sags her body carefully into her. “I’m not mad. I’m scared.”

“Oh.” Adora pulls her body away but doesn’t let go of her hand, instead curls towards her with one leg drawn up under her seat on the edge of the bed. “Can I hold you?”

Catra nods and lets Adora wrap herself gingerly around her side. She lets her head fall into Adora’s chest and smells the familiar scent of safety.

“My rib really does hurt…” She mumbles into skin.

“Do you want to me to move?” 

“No.”

She kisses the white fabric of Adora’s shirt and starts to purr.

One day she’ll tell Adora why she’s scared of the magic.

~ 

“Okay so… don't move and this will be really quick. You just need to breathe into your chest while I push on your back. You’ll hear a click and it will feel like someone jabbed you and then it will feel a lot better.” Perfuma is kneeling behind Catra on her bed. Catra’s bandeau is gone, lost in the pillows which were rearranged by hurricane Adora as she’d tried to find the perfect one to give to Catra to hug while Perfuma inspected her back. “I’m going to put some salve here first so its a bit less tender. This might hurt.”

“It can’t possibly hurt MROW!”

Adora stifles a laugh at the noise and finds the pillow Catra was clutching is too close to her face to deflect. It smashes into her nose.

“Hey!” 

“Don’t laugh at me! That really hurt!”

Catra sits in front of her, chest bare except for the arms she has crossed against her. She’s never been known for being modest.

“Sorry… it was just, I haven’t heard you make that noise in years.” Adora’s heart skips a bit, aches as she remembers the time Catra broke her nose as a kid. She’d taken a quarterstaff straight to the face from a falling Kyle during training. It’s bittersweet knowing that the fondness, the depth, the feeling of devotion, of what Adora now knows is her love remains in a past filled with so many lucid memories of hurt, harm and regret.

“I’m sorry.” Adora tries again, voice steady, tender. She sweeps the pillow up from the ground and grasps it against her own chest - walks towards Catra. “Can I hold your hand while Perfuma pops your rib back into place? Would that make you feel better.”

Catra scoffs.

“It’s a start.”

Adora gives Catra back the pillow and then its covering her fur-covered chest. She’s a bit sad to see it go. Wants to reach out and rub her fingers in the softest places of Catra’s fur. To feel Catra purr.

“Actually, I’m done.” Perfuma states, sliding her way off the bed. She smooths down her dress and grabs a patterned hankerchief from the small wooden box she’d brought, the one which houses her first aid supplies.

Catra’s head whips around, a bit too fast, Adora sees her face scrunch before Catra twists away and readjusts so she can fully face Perfuma.

“You… lied to me?” 

Perfuma lets out one small giggle and picks up her box and walks around the bed. Catra’s eyes follow her the whole distance, arms still clutching the reclaimed pillow.

Adora can now see that there is authentic slackjawed shock in Catra’s face.

“Well… yes.”

“Ruthless.” Adora can hear the impressed tone to Catra’s voice. 

Catra continues her twist to reach next to her and ruffle through the pillows. She frowns.

“Adora - get me a shirt?” 

Adora walks over to her closet and grabs the closest article of clothing. It’s a t-shirt she’s never worn. White with bands of dark purple going down the entire length of the sides.

When she turns back. Catra is no longer sitting on the bed clutching the pillow to her chest. She’s standing, bent over slightly, fingers limp and trying to touch her toes. A simple feat usually, even in Catra’s worse muscle cramp days, so Adora’s surprised she makes it only halfway before standing back up to her full height.

In only her boxers. The pillow is on the floor.

“Catra?” Adora squeaks a bit. As soon as they lock eyes, Adora sees Catra grinning manically back at her. She throws the shirt and Catra catches it, blows her an air kiss. And far too awkwardly for healthy Catra, puts on the shirt. 

Perfuma is still standing at the foot of the bed. Her own good natured smirk on her lips. Her eyes crinkled at the edges looking at Adora. 

Adora is pretty sure Perfuma is quite entertained by the hot blush across Adora’s cheeks.

“Well, existing doesn’t hurt quite as bad. Bending still kinda sucks.” Catra looks at Perfuma. “But its definitely better. Thank you.”

Adora melts a little. She doesn't think she'll ever stop melting when she hears something considerate fall so easily from Catra’s lips - especially when it's not directed at her.

She moves to pick up the pillow from the ground and put it away as Catra talks with Perfuma a little more. They’re not hiding the conversation but Adora wants to give them the space they need to talk. She makes the rest of the bed, its left corner is giving her heart palpitations with how crinkled it is, how the seat marks have creased the duvet’s perfect soft expanse from when it had been made when they’d left Brightmoon weeks ago.

She sees a few dried pieces of grass where Catra had been and kinda wants to scream a little. 

Her attention eventually drifts back to the conversation, the bed now made to pass full Horde inspection. The dried grass is now on the floor, probably lost in the heap of Catra’s dirty clothes. The pillows perfectly arranged in a pile at the head of the bed.

“I’ll be here for the next few days… do you want to join me and Scorpia for a meditation in the garden tomorrow morning?” 

Adora’s attention narrows back in on the conversation.

She fully expects Catra to decline. She hopes one day she won’t, knows that the pain of their past and the pain of a future living with remorse are things Adora barely manages on her own; she’s not sure she can help Catra lessen the panic or the darkness without messing up. She only knows that she will be there, will do whatever she can, no matter how much it scares her or how helpless she feels. But she can’t save both of them if they’re both drowning.

So when the next words reach her ears, she audibly gasps.

“Yeah okay, can I bring my idiot too?”

“Adora? Of course!”

“Hey Adora, you’re in charge of waking us up. Is eight okay?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like Catra has no shame and I'm proud of her.
> 
> I can't believe there is only one more chapter (of plot lol) to go! Thank you for sticking this far and I hope I do the ending emotional feels some justice!
> 
> Pre-warning: I have never written so much dialogue in my life. I hope it works. >.<


	10. Crown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end of the plot is nigh!

They take dinner in their room. Even though the official dinner of the evening has been over for more than two hours the food is still steaming hot.

Bow even brings it to them, his outfit still dirty and unchanged from the long day’s ride back with all the equipment on the Horde transport. Melog slinks in behind him and settles up against Catra, who is sitting against the headboard of the bed and they start to purr loudly while Catra uses both hands to scrunch their purple face and whisper at them.

Adora can only make out a couple of the words Catra is whispering to their alien companion, but what she hears makes her smile.

Bow hugs Adora as soon as he’s placed the tray on the bed and asks Catra how she’s feeling and she is exceptionally pleasant to him. Adora can’t stop smiling the entire time he’s there. Her face actually hurts. 

She feels pride in her heart seeing her worlds finally entwine. Sees Catra relax, smile, laugh while talking to Bow. Sees Bow genuinely accept Catra in his life even though Adora knows that he doesn’t need to. That he didn’t need to try, didn’t need to forgive or accept Catra. But he did.

Catra told her what had happened before she’d found her in the antechamber - she’d been questioning the interaction in the aftermath and all Adora could tell Catra was that Bow and Glimmer were the most genuine people she’d come to know. Catra hadn’t told Adora any doubts about them since. 

But seeing the ease before her very eyes was far more convincing that Catra wasn’t harbouring doubts about that at least.

They eat the roast while he’s there, and it's hot and delicious. 

Adora helps the conversation along but mostly is quiet, stands off to the side leaving Catra and Melog to sit and sprawl on the bed, Bow leans on the bed post talking with her.

Adora puts her empty plate on her dresser. She lets Bow and Catra lead, talk about the dinner meeting - about how it was actually still happening. About how Glimmer can’t seem to get the royal court to finally reach a conclusion of how best to assist the Fright Zone - how King Micah is still adjusting, is supportive but doesn’t know half of the members of the court now. It has been over a decade.

Adora loves the way Catra’s face crinkles when she’s really thinking, trying to parse some kind of strategy out.

“It doesn’t help that Glimmer isn’t always the best at containing her temper either.” Bow groans. “And the court respects me and everything and sometimes they listen to me but I don’t know what to tell Glimmer to say to have them believe in her y’know. I’m the Master Archer sure, but Glimmer’s Queen. They should respect her.”

“That’s the first problem. There’s probably nothing which can be said.” Catra’s tail is flicking a bit. Her thoughts still running through her. “Only things which can be done to convince them she’s truly fit to lead.”

“Hm.” Bow looks especially pensive. “So we just pick a direction and do it.”

“Yeah, basically.” Catra lets out a small laugh. “Maybe something small, just don’t give them the chance to say no. She just needs to prove herself. Beyond battle I mean. And she needs to be less … distracted by those damned letters. Someone else needs to sift through that crap. She needs to spend more time in the meetings where actual things get done.”

“That’s some pretty good advice.” Bow smiles at her and reaches out a hand to grab the empty plate sitting on Catra’s lap. She’d managed to finish it, though it had taken her at least three times as long as it had taken Adora to gorge on hers. Which was really only twice as long as normal for Catra.

Adora is still a little hungry, but she’s more often than not a little hungry. Its a familiar feeling. One which easily brings her back to the Fright Zone. To the long nights laying in bed, Catra curled up at her feet, longing to invite her closer, but afraid.

Afraid that if she showed how much Catra mattered, if she’d caught them too close come morning inspection, that Shadow Weaver would take her away. Would say she made Adora weak.

“She distracts you, confuses you.” 

The mask upon her face as She-Ra in the hidden rooms of Mystacor only brought hurt and despair to Catra’s face when Adora had hoped it showed to Catra how much she’d meant to her. How much of Catra inspired Adora to press on. To defeat Prime. To save her. To save everyone.

She wanted to prove to Catra that her choices were for Catra too, not just everyone else. She wanted the chance to say how much Catra meant to her, but she knew saying the words would have made it impossible for her to go through with her sacrifice. She couldn’t just bow out of existence then, not after years of pushing away the warmth in her heart, the flutters in her stomach.

Not when together might also be able to exist with safe.

But they hadn’t talked on their way back to their camp in the cavern. It tore Adora apart but she didn’t know what to say let alone how to say it. She could only feel it burning a hole through her heart.

The memory of waking, confused comes soon after. Catra running away barrels into her chest like the magical code of the heart syphoning its painful encoding into her body, burning her chest.

She remembers the fallen pit of despair in her gut as she clutched Catra’s pack, the red anger threatening to punch Shadow Weaver across the face, over and over and over if she dared let go of it.

Remembers the knowing. 

That once she made it to the Heart; she would probably die. 

That together and safe were destined to never occupy her life.

That the last memory she’d have to cling onto as the magic of Etheria destroyed her was Catra leaving her, just like Adora had left her. What little of Adora was left had her heart broken knowing she let Catra go again without telling her how much she meant to her, all because she was so incredibly afraid that if she did, she could never see her sacrifice through. That she wouldn't be able to save the universe.

That she wouldn’t be able to save Catra.

And so she tried to be strong. Tried to function knowing she would never see Catra again. That it was the only way she could save her. That she could save her friends.

So Adora channelled all of the love she could for Glimmer and Bow, mustered the strength to walk into the tunnels leading her to the Heart with it. To be brave for them, so she could save them. She wanted so desperately to save all of them. To save Catra.

But it wasn’t enough. 

She felt like Adora had died when Catra left her and all she was now was the possibility of She-Ra. The duty of destiny dragging her to an unfightable end.

“Thanks.” Adora watches Catra hesistate to hand Bow her plate, its an unfamiliar exchange. It doesn’t fit with the past she feels heavy on her mind. “You know I can take that down.”

“Nonsense.” He reaches beyond her lap and grabs it instead. “I’m sure Glimmer is about to blow a gasket, so I better get down there anyways before the meeting room becomes the war room again.”

Adora can see the twinkle of an idea in Bow’s eye but she doesn’t even know where the thread of that yarn to pull is located, so she doesn’t ask. She wants to sit next to Catra on their bed. She feels too far away now.

And Adora wants to talk to her. She wants to say the things she hasn’t said before. Has thought through the words throughout the entire day before while Catra slept it away, hurt and broken and Adora hadn’t moved fifty feet from the pile of sneezing fur in the sun. She’d just stared into the fields, at Bow and Entrapta making bots and staring at their tracker pads and at the subtle shifting colours of Melog as Catra moved in her dreams.

She’d arranged her thoughts into something more than feeling, or showing or gesture while they silentely rode Swift Wind back to Brightmoon. They were words now and they threatened to spill all over the floor.

Adora thought she could wait for tomorrow, after they’d both rested, but she couldn’t.

She wipes the corner of one eye starting to tear, and masks the sadness on her face.

She regrets so much. She doesn’t want to risk any chance that this is something she could regret too.

“Adora?” Bow is now in front of her. He’s grabbing at Adora’s empty plate beside her too.

“Oh hey!” Adora refocuses her eyes on Bow’s face.

“See you for breakfast?” He looks a bit concerned, but Adora can tell the gears in his head are too busy twirling around ideas of his own. She smiles back at him, smoothing over his worry.

“Yeah! Say goodnight to Glimmer for me.”

“I will! Goodnight you too!”

“Bye Arrow Boy!” Catra calls from the bed. 

And then Bow is gone and its just Adora and her thoughts and Catra and her Melog.

“You’re either contemplating second dinner and feeling guilty about it, or there is something on your mind.” 

Adora lets out a small chuckle. Leave it to Catra to be the mindreader and not the magical being hogging most of their bed right now.

“Maybe it’s both.” She responds, turning to see Catra, expression open, eyebrow raised, her bandaged arm outstretched so her hand can twirl around Melog’s ear.

“Come here then? I think there is enough room for at least half of you to sit in that corner there.” Catra points to the space next to her. Melog’s paw is in the center of the empty space, twitching in a dream.

“How generous.”

And then Adora crosses the few feet between them and sits on the edge of the bed, but Catra lightly jabs Melog and they wake with a meow before giving Adora room to squeeze next to Catra - who is taking up more than half of the bed with her small frame just sitting there against the headboard, feet sprawled as far apart as possible.

Catra’s hand snakes around Adora’s waist and pulls her as close as possible before settling behind her on the bed, fingers lightly resting on the side of her hip, fingers lightly tapping.

“So dummy, why are you thinking so hard?” Catra finally asks when Adora has sat there in silence for too long, her mouth having opened and closed at least three times.

“I know what I want to say… but I don’t know if now is right.” 

Adora tilts her head to look at Catra’s expression. She doesn’t want to burden her now, not that she’s hurt, that they’re full and resting and happy.

Melog adjusts and presses deeply against Adora’s legs.

“Now is just fine.” Catra responds back to her, expression neutral. Her hand doesn’t move from its place but her fingers stop their tapping, resting instead. She tilts her head back so its resting at the top of the headboard and closes her eyes, like she’s expecting what’s coming.

“I - ” Adora pauses, takes one last look at Catra and takes a deep breath. “I wanted to show you how much of you, makes up who I am. I want to tell you why She-Ra’s… my crown is your mask.”

Adora waits for a response. She gets the smallest grunt in return. Catra’s face is still neutral, her fingers still resting against Adora’s body, unmoving.

“There’s this Etherian tradition when Ehlo, the largest moon, eclipses the sun, where you give someone a token. Its meant to represent that the person has become a part of you. Last year, Bow and Glimmer took me and got the three of us matching outfits instead, to make me feel included without making me feel like I was pressured to do anything with the tradition - they were basically saying they wanted to give me something. If I had known I know I would have wanted to as well and they knew that - but all that it reminded me of, was how I didn’t know what parts of me were… me. What kind of thing could I even give away?

“Growing up in the Horde, I’d never thought about who I was, what I wanted really. What made me… me? Nothing really mattered because those things were just… were taken away as soon as they could take them. So there was no point in wanting anything, if the Horde didn’t want it too. But… even through all of that, I’d always wanted one thing, to have a future with you in it.

“I wanted to make Force Captain so I could have the power to keep you at my side, to prevent you from being taken away. And in that moment during the festival, I had a different future, one that I also wanted, one with Bow and Glimmer and helping my friends, and the people of Etheria, but I didn’t want to let go of you. It was the only thing I had. The only thing I couldn't just give away. I still wanted that future with you in it. I wanted you there with me. So desperately.

“I still want it now.

“So on Horde Prime’s ship, when I thought it was all over, thought that you’d died in my arms and that I’d never be able to show you - that I couldn’t-”

Adora feels the anguish all over again. The anger overtaking her, turning her to stone. 

The dead weight of Catra’s torso held tightly against her chest, the rattling of her shallow breaths until there are no more, her own legs crying in excrutiating pain, unable to conform to her will to stand.

The burst of will to try one more time. To fight.

A quiet plea.

For the honour of Grayskull.

“Adora?” 

Adora can feel Catra shift, feels the sensitive pads of her fingertips wipe tears from her cheeks. 

Adora sees Catra’s eyes, open and watery next to her, waiting.

“I thought about that festival, that exchange. How I could prove to you what you meant to me if you opened your eyes. How I could show you… show everyone what you meant to me. That you are the only thing I ever truly wanted. I know it’s not quite the same - because I took it from you, you didn’t give it to me. But everyone on Etheria would know that part of me would be dead without you. That who they had now was She-Ra but Adora… she’d be hollow … she’d be gone without you. I wanted them to know I loved you.

“That Adora wouldn’t be able to do it. To carry the fate of the entire planet, the entire universe in a future without the possibility of you in it.

“A-And you were dead… in my arms… I couldn’t feel anything. I took down clones and I liked it because I was so angry. Angry that Prime had taken you away from me, but angrier that I’d taken you away from myself. The one thing that I had always wanted - the one thing that had made me feel like me, I had left behind.”

Adora goes silent again. Takes a deep breath.

“But if there was any chance I could save you, I wanted you to see that you mattered to me. That I loved you, even then. That even … even if I was too scared to tell you I could at least show you. That I was willing to try.”

There’s a thick silence between them and Adora does her best to swallow her sobs but some break through as broken puffs of hiccups and whines. 

“And you did.” Catra breathes, tears freely falling down her cheeks, leaving dark stains as they wet her fur.

“I love you so much Catra.” Adora wipes away her own tears blurring the dark blue and purples of Melog’s changing body from her focus. “I loved you so much, even then. I’m so sorry I left you.”

Adora shifts onto her knees and collapses her head onto Catra’s shoulder carefully. Wraps her arms around Catra’s body.

She cries for a long time. Melog lays across her calves. Catra twists her fingers into Adora’s hair and holds her.

“Thank you for telling me.” Catra says into her hair. “I noticed the first time you transformed. Before you destroyed the ships tracking Darla. I was… in awe… but I was also so confused. I wasn’t sure what it meant. But I knew it meant something.

“I was just so happy to be out of that hellscape, back in your life. I regret not coming with you. Every single day. And when I saw your silly Princess tiara had turned into my mask… I expected you to say something. But you didn’t.

“Not even when you were going to die.”

Adora swallows hard, the stab in her heart reverberating through her limbs. She clutches Catra tighter.

“I’m sorry.” Adora whispers. But Catra keeps going.

“So when I ran, it was because I couldn’t cope that you were giving up your future right when I’d just gotten mine back - but I saw that Horde Prime’s virus could take you and everything you were sacrificing for away and I couldn’t let it happen. He’d already taken everything from me, I wasn’t going to let him take everything from you too.

“And then you were dying in my arms, and I looked into your eyes and it clicked in my stupid brain that this couldn’t be what you had wanted. And I couldn’t wait any longer to see how you felt. We were out of time. I needed to tell you why I was trying to be better. Why I had been so broken, and in that moment, why I came back, why I stayed.”

Catra strokes Adora’s hair, loosens tendrils of it from the hairtie tightened against her scalp. 

Adora stares out the open balcony at the stars. Let’s out a relieved sigh. 

Sometimes when she looks at the sky, she doesn’t think that what she’s experiencing is real. She remembers the years without stars in the sky. The years that sitting flush against Catra was as fake as the thought that there was something beyond the moons.

Catra starts to purr and Adora’s grip loosens and she pulls away to look into Catra’s eyes - her focus shifting between the mismatched colours - not knowing which one she wants to settle on.

“We’re idiots.” Catra deadpans before Adora has a chance to say anything. “But I know you love me. And you know that I love you. So I think we have a pretty good future, even if its going to be… a bit hard.” Catra grimaces a little.

“When have our lives ever been easy?” Adora draws away to shift and Melog rolls off of her and dismounts off the bed. 

Adora settles back beside Catra and watches as Catra stares too long at Melog, a tell that she’s listening to what they’re saying. Then Melog vanishes.

They sit side by side for a while, Catra grabs Adora’s hand and they watch as some moons shift beyond the railing of the balcony and others come into view. Just contemplating, feeling, digesting.

Catra lets out a soft chuckle and Adora’s foreheard creases.

“What?” She glances at Catra’s face; the emotional whirlwind has left her feeling mushy and tired.

“Well if we’re taking things from each other. Then this - “ Faster than Adora has seen Catra move in two days, her body twists and her fingers swipe across Adora’s stomach, her belt snaps back against her not entirely unpainfully. “Is mine now.”

Catra holds up Adora’s belt buckle, the wings of Brightmoon etched in gold reflect the light of the laterns still roaring with illumination along the walls.

“Now we’re even.”

Adora smiles and echoes back.

“Now we’re even.”

They don’t need to wait for Etherian traditions when they can stumble around inventing their own. 

“Where are you going to put that?” Adora questions, looking up and down and gesturing across Catra’s outfit of t-shirt and boxers, 

“Right now? Under my pillow.”

“Don’t lose it!”

“I don’t move in my sleep - unlike some people.” Catra mock glares at her before letting out a bodily laugh. “I’m going to wear it on my chest. Every day. So everyone knows.” Catra’s voice drops into almost nothingness.

Adora feels her heart flutter. Her face cracks with a beaming smile and she can’t help herself. She tilts her body moves to kneel just beside Catra, her face shooting towards Catra’s, her bare cheek meeting Catra’s soft furry one.

“Are you… nuzzling me?” Catra questions. She doesn’t stop Adora, instead wraps her fingers through Adora’s hair. There’s a tug at the back of her head and then her blonde hair falls all around their faces. 

“Maybe.” Adora finally answers, not stopping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so very much for reading, kudosing and commenting - I had a lot of fun writing this and I hope you had at least half as much fun reading it :) 
> 
> Sometimes I draw - mostly Best Friend Squad+ peeps doing everyday things (like Adora eating a salad) - if you're into that you can see it @pinkzerospop on the Insta and Twitters and give me a poke.
> 
> The next part in the series is just... for fun... not at all needed for this plot. It's called 'Let’s Play a Game (Where You’ve Already Won)' ... No angst. Just fun and fluff. it picks up basically right after the nuzzle :) 
> 
> It's also the first time I've written anything explicit ever so... be prepared for that this coming Friday if you want - otherwise thank you - let me know what you thought (and if I had any horrible spelling mistakes) and maybe come back sometime in the future to see the other adventure I'm cooking up.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first actual fic in over a decade. Magically I managed to finish it and well - my partner encouraged me to post it. So here it is. I spook easily (growing up in a haunted house does that to you) but I don't bite and I would greatly enjoy comments 😄 (even if its just your favourite emojis 👻 🦎 🥦 🐝 🙃) 
> 
> This fic is technically 'done' (needs a few minor edits) so here's the posting schedule to look forward to! (Should be posted by 11pm PDT/PST at the latest) 
> 
> Now - Chapters 1 & 2  
> Sept 9th - Chapters 3 & 4  
> Sept 11th - Chapters 5 & 6  
> Sept 14th - Chapters 7 & 8  
> Sept 16th - Chapters 9 & 10  
> Sept 18th - Part Two (Is the Epilogue but the rating changes to Explicit Content - as a treat - but for those who don't fancy that kind of thing, its not necessary for the arc of the story.)


End file.
